Alarms went off in my head.  My mind shifted gears rapidly, snapping out of my thoughts and paying attention to what I was hearing.  Tara and I were in the living room while my oldest daughter and oldest son—5 years apart in age—were in the kitchen.  I could hear them but couldn’t see them (we actually want to remove that wall…).

My ears heard the unmistakable sounds of a fight starting.

The stars had aligned and the five of us sat down to play a game together.  It was a new one from Christmas, we were all sloths racing around a track, and the last one across the finish line won!  It was a cute premise and we laughed along for ten minutes.  Unfortunately, the game hadn’t ended.

I came around the corner from the hallway into the kitchen and was presented with the sight of my eleven-year-old daughter going to-and-fro with pots of water boiling, cooking materials everywhere, and headphones on her ears.  My wife had taken our youngest son to yet another therapy session (being a Special Needs Mom is tough), the other kids were nowhere to be seen, and I had just come off a long day of work.

A few weeks ago, we discussed marriage as a partnership like you’d find in an adventure movie.  Today, we need to look at partnership from a slightly different angle.

Yes, our differences can cause conflict or complementarity.  They can push us apart or join us together.  The reality, though, is this only works when both partners do three, specific things very consistently.

Parents pass along all kinds of lessons to their kids. We teach manners, habits, life skills, and more. We want our kids to have every advantage and to start where we are, instead of where we were at their age.

My nine-year-old son was in flag football this year. At his first practice, one of the other kids was so nervous he cried. Several of the boys threw further than I could. My son was somewhere in the middle. I was so relieved that I hadn’t messed him up beyond hope!

We are brand new to homeschooling!  I have a theology degree, not an education degree.  We are about four weeks into the year and most days I feel I am sinking further and further into the depths of the ocean without any life jacket or preserver.  I am so over my head that I am not sure if I’m still breathing.  

My wife and I have never been big fans of deep or controversial movies. The reason being that if we want to go to a movie, we want to go for the experience of escaping into an adventure or travelling to a distant alien planet or rooting for the underdog who travels into hostile territory to destroy a ring that nobody else has the courage or will to do. Recently, we took a different turn and decided to view the movie Unplanned.