It was Thanksgiving, the time when families gather, enjoy mounds of savory food, tell stories, and reminisce about the year’s blessings.

Munching on their pumpkin-flavored holiday snacks, sipping hot cider, and snuggled up warmly under cushy blankets on the couches in my sister’s living room, the adults in the room all had their eyes on me.

I’ll admit, suggesting a “family goals night” was a risky proposition considering our normal after Thanksgiving tradition included watching football and scouring through the sales papers for the best Black Friday deals.

But after attending Emily Freeman’s At the Barn event earlier in the month of November and hearing her dad Gary Morland talk about the impact of their family goals night on the quality of their family relationships, I decided it was worth the risk.

And so, for several hours, my parents, my sister and her husband, and my husband and I all sat around together sharing our highlights from the year before and talking through our dreams and goals for the year to come.

From my perspective, the night was a game-changer.

While our family has always been close, taking time to individually share our goals surrounding creating more God-centered homes joined us together in an even stronger way.

By specifically naming this goal, deciding to be purposeful about carrying it out, and then sharing it with one another for accountability, we each set ourselves up for success.

It’s been almost a year since that original “family goals night.”

Lots of things have changed in our three family units – houses, jobs, churches, volunteer opportunities, family size, and more. In the midst of major family transitions, we all stayed committed to making God the center of our homes.

Did we do it perfectly? Absolutely not!

Thankfully, perfection is not the point. {Are you a recovering perfectionist like me?}

But making purposeful choices surrounding parenting our children and patterning our homes after God’s word?

Yes, that’s the goal!

A 31 Day Challenge

For the month of October I’m joining in with hundreds of other writers online in The Nester’s 31 Day Writing Challenge.

Here at Embracing the Mosaic Life I’ll be sharing practical parenting tools & resources, scriptures, and inspiration from other Christian parents to help move us all forward in our quest to create a God-centered home. Each Monday will feature an incredible giveaway and you can expect other fun surprises throughout the week as well.

For more details about the challenge and to find the full list of posts, see: Parenting With Purpose: Creating a God-Centered Home.

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, or Pinterest.