Parenting With Purpose: Day 2 – Set The Atmosphere First

It’s Day 2 of the 31 Day Writing Challenge and all through the month of October we’re diving into Parenting on Purpose: Creating a God-Centered Home.

If you missed Day 1, you can read it here. Just scroll down to the bottom of the page for the list of posts in this series.

Today we’re focusing in on a critical aspect of creating a God-centered home.

While there is certainly not a formula for how to center yourself in your relationship with God and in His word, the key message is that we make this a priority in our own lives.

We must be filled up with God’s Spirit and have His truths planted firmly in our hearts before we’re able to pour out grace-filled, purposeful parenting that leads our children’s hearts closer to the heart of God. 

While my journey toward centering myself in God’s word may look different from yours, today I’m sharing my path with the hope that it will be the catalyst for some of you to at least begin this journey or even take a few steps forward toward preparing your hearts to create a more God-centered home.

My Story: From Night Owl to Early Bird

My husband would be the first to tell you stories from the early days of our marriage when he literally would have to pull me out of bed in the mornings so I wouldn’t be late for work.

No joke.

I was in my 20s and required another adult to intervene just to get me out of bed. Sometimes I wonder how I ever made it to 8am college classes!

Needless to say, this was not a highlight of our marriage every morning and it continued for years. Years, ya’ll!

I’m thinking this is one of those things my mom should have warned my husband about before he married me, seeing as getting out of bed in the mornings has been a challenge for me as long as I can remember.

Time for a Change

While I can’t recall the exact catalyst for my change in this deeply rooted habit of sleeping in, I do remember we’d recently transitioned my daughter into a toddler bed at the time.

For months, I’d wake up to little hands on my face and then she’d crawl into bed for snuggles. I convinced myself that these sweet snuggles were just too precious to squelch, so I continued to sleep (or at least stay in bed) until the absolute last minute.

Usually I stayed in bed later than the last absolute minute.

As you can imagine, my mornings after I finally DID get out of bed were not particularly productive with me rushing around trying to get myself ready and out the door to work on time.

The Turning Point

My husband ended up taking up the slack every morning, getting our daughter ready and making both of us breakfast. He is gracious but after awhile, his constant “LeeAnn. Get. Out. Of. Bed.” reminders each morning {combined with some conviction from the Holy Spirit} helped me realize my choices in the mornings were dishonoring him and starting our days off poorly.

The atmosphere in our home in the mornings was rushed and irritable and it was my fault. 

I definitely was not starting my day off centered in God’s word.

To be honest, I wasn’t setting aside any time for God’s word at this point in my life.

My daughter didn’t sleep through the night consistently until she was 15 months old so I’d been functioning in a state of exhaustion for quite awhile. I used that as an excuse along with some other spiritually challenging situations that should have led me TO God’s word instead of AWAY from it.

As a result, both my relationship with my husband and the atmosphere in my home were suffering. On top of that, I felt completely out of control in many other areas of my life because I was lacking roots in my relationship with God.

 Finding A Key Resource

I am a serious research junkie. My husband tells people I can find anything online that I’m looking for and usually that’s true. It’s not a surprise that “Curiosity” was listed as my top strength in an online character strength test he asked me to take not long ago.

So once I realized that something in my morning routine needed to change, I did what I always do when I don’t know what to do or how to do it – research!

It was by God’s grace that my Google searching landed me directly onto a site with just the resource I needed!

Tomorrow for Day 3 of the Parenting With Purpose series I’ll reveal the resource that changed my mornings and led me down a completely different path. 

I’ll be sharing:

• The challenge that changed everything about my mornings
• A free ebook for you to use on your morning journey
• My favorite song for starting my mornings off God-centered
• An exciting opportunity for you to begin your God-centered mornings the same way I did!

Don’t Miss Out!

If you’re not already receiving blog posts by email, you can sign up to follow along with the series and have the posts delivered right to your inbox. Or, if you’d prefer, follow along on Facebook,Twitter, Pinterest, or BlogLovin.

For those of you who would like to dive deeper into the topic each day, join the moms gathered in our private Facebook group for this series. I can’t wait to meet you and encourage one another on this parenting journey!