Family Day

In my recent post, Meeting Sally, I mentioned that we had scheduled a Family Day as outlined in The Lifegiving Home.  

Family Day is a day set aside to remember who we are as a family and what we believe in and stand for.  A day to remember how God has been faithful in the past year.  A day to pray about plans, dreams, and hopes for the coming year.  A day to enjoy one another.  In her book, Sally plans a full day together – a big breakfast, time to sit and make lists of God’s faithfulness, a time of prayer for the coming year, followed by a drive into the mountains for a picnic lunch and hike.  

Here is what our morning looked like:

We set aside one morning, not a whole day as suggested in the book.  We made a delicious, big breakfast which we often reserve for weekends anyway.  After cleaning up, we gathered paper, pencils, a bible, our pile of rocks from the front yard we cleaned ahead of time, and a glass, quart jar and lid.  We read from Joshua 4 where God commands the Israelites to create a memorial of stones to remind them and future generations of His faithfulness.  

Joshua 4:21-24
And he said the the people of Israel, “When your children ask their fathers in times to come, ‘What do these stones mean?’ then you shall let your children know, ‘Israel passed over this Jordan on dry ground.’  For the LORD your God dried up the waters of the Jordan for you until you passed over, as the LORD your God did to the Red Sea, which he dried up for us until we passed over, so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the hand of the LORD is mighty, that you may fear the LORD your God forever.”

And that’s what we did.  As we listed the ways God has been faithful in our family, individually and together, we placed a rock in the middle of the table.  Anna drew pictures of some of her items rather than writing – whatever works. As we continued thinking through these many things, our pile of rocks grew and we ended up with a memorial.  We now have a jar of rocks – not pretty rocks, just plain old looking rocks – in our dining room and it reminds us all not only of our Family Day together, but of God’s faithfulness to our Knapp family.  We then spent some time talking about the coming year and praying for the things on our hearts and minds.  

This first time was a little awkward doing something new and figuring out what we’re doing.  Not everyone was thrilled about it, but in the end, we all enjoyed our time together.  Not every new tradition has to be perfect; our morning was far from perfect. The point is spending time together and focusing on our blessings.  I’m hoping to continue this tradition every August and I think in years to come it will become more natural.  August seems like a good time of year for this as we begin a new school year. I’m planning to put these lists in a scrapbook which will become a wonderful way to look back on our Family Days together.  

Does your family do something similar to Family Day?  What other suggestions would you offer or add?

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