The Stick-Together Families
Edgar Guest

The stick-together families are happier by far
Than the brothers and the sisters who take separate highways are.
The gladdest people living are the wholesome folks who make
A circle at the fireside that no power but death can break.
And the finest of conventions ever held beneath the sun
Are the little family gatherings when the busy day is done.

There are rich folk, there are poor folk, who imagine they are wise,
And they’re very quick to shatter all the little family ties.
Each goes searching after pleasure in his own selected way,
Each with strangers likes to wander, and with strangers likes to play.
But it’s bitterness they harvest, and it’s empty joy they find,
For the children that are wisest are the stick-together kind.

There are some who seem to fancy that for gladness they must roam,
That for smiles that are the brightest they must wander far from home.
That the strange friend is the true friend, and they travel far astray
And they waste their lives in striving for a joy that’s far away,
But the gladdest sort of people, when the busy day is done,
Are the brothers and the sisters who together share their fun.

It’s the stick-together family that wins the joys of earth,
That hears the sweetest music and that finds the finest mirth;
It’s the old home roof that shelters all the charm that life can give;
There you find the gladdest play-ground, there the happiest spot to live.
And, O weary, wandering brother, if contentment you would win,
Come you back unto the fireside and be comrade with your kin.

From “Just Folks”, The Reilly & Lee Co., (c) 1917

And I would also like to dedicate this poem to my father-in-law, Gary L. Douglas, who was such a man.

A Real Man
Edgar Guest

Men are of two kinds, and he
Was of the kind I’d like to be.
Some preach their virtues, and a few
Express their lives by what they do.
That sort was he. No flowery phrase
Or glibly spoken words of praise
Won friends for him. He wasn’t cheap
Or shallow, but his course ran deep,
And it was pure. You know the kind.
Not many in a life you find
Whose deeds outrun their words so far
That more than what they seem they are.

There are two kinds of lies as well:
The kind you live, the ones you tell.
Back through his years from age to youth
He never acted one untruth.
Out in the open light he fought
And didn’t care what others thought
Nor what they said about his fight
If he believed that he was right.
The only deeds he ever hid
Were acts of kindness that he did.

What speech he had was plain and blunt.
His was an unattractive front.
Yet children loved him; babe and boy
Played with the strength he could employ,
Without one fear, and they are fleet
To sense injustice and deceit.
No back door gossip linked his name
With any shady tale of shame.
He did not have to compromise
With evil-doers, shrewd and wise,
And let them ply their vicious trade
Because of some past escapade.

Men are of two kinds, and he
Was of the kind I’d like to be.
No door at which he ever knocked
Against his manly form was locked.
If ever man on earth was free
And independent, it was he.
No broken pledge lost him respect,
He met all men with head erect,
And when he passed, I think there went
A soul to yonder firmament
So white, so splendid and so fine
It came almost to God’s design.

But some of the relationship has been between me and Susan’s daughter, who is the artist that I feature in the sidebar of my blog, Emily Kate. We talk on the phone and used to chat online until they moved to a house that doesn’t have internet access (Can you believe it?) Their family came to visit us one time in Illinois, and we had a worship time with them that was so sweet that we felt God right there with us.

Susan’s oldest son, Cody, has maintained a long-distance relationship with Shawn through emails from time to time and a few visits and just a few talks on the phone. But the Lord has knit their hearts together, and He had a plan to strengthen that bond even more.

Two weeks ago, totally out of the blue, inspired by God, Cody called and asked Shawn if he could come and visit us for a while. None of us knew what was going to happen or exactly why Cody was supposed to come, but we all had the feeling that he was supposed to. So God worked out all the details for the visit, and Cody got to fly for the first time, and we got to enjoy his company for about eight days. He just became one of the family. He played chess with the little ones and anybody else who would play with him. He convinced us to get the board game Risk and played it with Garrett and Shawn – and Garrett won the game the first time he ever played it! He got a deck of cards and played Go Fish with Garrett. He became best buddies with Garrett. The little ones really loved him. He was a joy to have around.

We watched a movie all together, The Muppet Movie.

We had some talks and prayer times together. I prayed over Shawn and Cody that the Lord would speak to them and show them what He wants to do in their lives and how they can prepare for the next step in their lives. Like our family, they have homeschooled all the way through. We met years ago when Cody and Shawn were only about 8 years old, and I started doing their family’s homeschool assessments. Cody taught himself how to repair engines and how to restore cars, so the Lord spoke to us about how he could use those skills as a stepping stone to the goals he has to own his own farm some day and raise animals. As we talked and prayed together, things became crystal clear and we could just sense the hope and faith rising that this was possible and doable and that God would bless the work of his hands and prosper him. It was very exciting to see God unfold His plan for Cody’s life.

Shawn and Cody prayed together and did some Bible study.

We got some revelation from the Lord about the next steps Cody is to take to set things up for the bigger things that God has put in his heart to do.

One of the highlights was a worship time we had together. Anna played her guitar, and we sang some worship songs that she had learned. Then we sang in the spirit and sang whatever the Lord gave each of us as Anna strummed on her guitar. It was sweet, similar to the time we had with Cody’s whole family when they came to visit us in Illinois. The presence of the Lord was strong.

The Lord called him here, and he answered. It was mutually beneficial. We all enjoyed having him here. We got to know him better, and he got to know us better. We felt like he was a good friend before, but now he’s one of the family.

We hated to see him go. As a final send-off, we took him to our favorite ice cream place. We all went to the airport to see him off. It was a 3-hour trip there and back, but the little kids did very well.

It was a wonderful time of refreshing for all of us. Something new and different, out of the ordinary, a special time of ministry and memory-making with a very special person that the Lord has put in our lives. We are looking forward to what the Lord is going to do in Cody’s life and the life of his family.

Our hearts are knit together even more than they were before. We are thankful that the Lord orchestrated such a blessed time. Only He could have planned that and pulled it off without a hitch. Gary even got to be here for part of the time. It was just a perfectly blessed time. The Lord is doing great things for us, and we are glad. We are grateful to be in His service. And thankful to have friends who are so real and authentic. Hearts that are pure and seeking the will of the Father for their lives. May we always be found faithful and sensitive to His leading.

His first violin was broken in a violent collision with a neighbor kid when it was stored under Morgan’s bed. We bought him another one later, and we kept it up on a high shelf in our closet. I looked for lessons online, but I didn’t have much luck.

I went to watch a concert of a violin group that a friend of Anna’s played in. I talked to the teacher afterward and found out her rates, and it just didn’t seem feasible, plus we knew we were going to be moving soon, so I didn’t think there would be much use in barely getting started and then having to leave.

But I finally decided (as I prayed about this issue) at the beginning of this year that we were in good financial condition and I had transportation, so I should go ahead and find a teacher for Morgan and get him started with violin lessons. He could at least learn how to make the thing make some noise. None of us knew the first thing about the violin, so when we rubbed the bow on the strings and no sound came out, we were baffled.

I looked at the homeschool newsletter and saw an ad for a violin teacher, so I called her. Janet Walsh is her name, and she has been the perfect teacher for Morgan. She encourages him, but she keeps reminding him of good form so that he will learn it the correct way at first instead of learning bad habits that he will have to unlearn later on. By the time I found a teacher for him, he had outgrown his second violin, so now I had to buy him a third violin! I got him a full-size one, and he is doing great with it.

He has been taking lessons for 2 months now, and I’m amazed at the progress he has made.

Here he is!

Take it away, Morgan!

The Lord has done great things for us. He has answered many prayers, and caused many of our dreams to come true!

Go to Currclick right now! You won’t want to miss the gifts they’re offering starting at 10:00 CST.

From 10:00 CST today (May 8th) through May 15th, visitors to the site will get 5 awesome freebies, download a free Mother’s Day card for their kids to personalize & enter to win an iPod Nano AND an iPod Shuffle.
Plus, they’ll want to be sure and check out Facebook, where 5 additional freebies will be given away throughout the week.

So get on over to the website and their Facebook page and get your freebies!

Three of today’s freebies including the Free Product of the Week are things you can do with your kids to help celebrate Mother’s Day!

One of them could win your child an iPod Shuffle! And might bring some heartfelt affirmation to you from your kids.

Moms, you have a chance to win an iPod Nano if you write some reviews of products you’ve purchased from Currclick.

What are you waiting for? Go on over to Currclick and join the fun!

I’m so excited to go to a place that has so much freedom to homeschool after living under such oppressive homeschool law for over a year.

Thank you, Lord, for providing so abundantly for us!

Thank you, everyone who prayed for us!

I’ll be giving more details as I get them. Better get busy packing now.

I wear a red wrist band on my right wrist. I’ve been wearing it there for almost 7 years now. I got it the first time we went to IHOP when we visited there on our way to Arizona. We were starting out on our Journey of Fire. We had no idea what lay ahead. But a man from IHOP gave us these wrist bands so we could stand up for life and proclaim the pro-life message wherever we go. The word “LIFE” is engraved in this red wrist band. When we ended up back in Kansas City after we found out that Arizona was not where the Lord wanted us to settle, we went to the Sunday morning meetings at IHOP’s FCF (Forerunner Christian Fellowship).

There we said the LIFE prayer every Sunday morning: Jesus, I plead your blood over my sins and the sins of my nation. God, end abortion and send revival to America.

As I said that prayer, I always held onto my LIFE band.

Just yesterday, I received another wrist adornment that I consider a pro-life message just as much as my LIFE band. I got a birthstone bracelet that is called a Mother’s Bracelet. It displays all of the birthstones of my children – all 10 of them. I gave that area of our lives to the Lord and He blessed us exceedingly abundantly above all that I could ask or think. I gave him our womb.

These children are my greatest blessing in life after my salvation (relationship with God) and my husband. I’m very thankful to have many blessings. When I look at my bracelet and see these stones, I see each of my children. It reminds me of the breastplate that the priests of Israel wore that carried the stones that represented each of the tribes of Israel. He wore it close to his heart. I wear mine on my wrist. It makes it easy for me to look down and see them and think about each of my children many times throughout the day. And of course, I pray for them when I think about them.

Yesterday, I showed the youngest ones which stones represented them on the bracelet. They were happy to see that each of them had their own stone on my bracelet. Even though we have four birthdays in January, each of these children has their own garnet on my bracelet. I hope this makes them feel special and unique. They each have their own place on my bracelet and in my heart.

I posted pictures of my new bracelet on Facebook, and lots of people liked it. I got it from Custom Bracelets by Lisa, by the way. Abby heard me talking about how many people like my new bracelet, and she said, “And the green one is me!”

Relationship Training

What I have observed is that people are training children to live in a people-centered way instead of a God-centered way. And the relationships that they are fostering and encouraging are self-centered. Children are taught to use other people to get their needs met. They try to impress other people and gain their admiration or envy. They are encouraged to compete and compare themselves with others. And they learn to emulate others that they consider attractive and cool. They learn to control and manipulate, and they are rewarded for it. Parents don’t know what to expect from children because parents don’t know how to build good relationships themselves!

And it’s not just parents; it’s most adults, including teachers, Sunday School teachers, pastors, other church leaders, coaches, and leaders of groups that train children. They can’t teach what they don’t know. And not many people know how to build relationships based solely on love for the other person with no self-interest or self-seeking. We teach our children by example that it’s okay to “use people to gain approval for yourself by parading your abilities and making arrangements to spend time with people who seem to like you or be impressed by you.” Barbie Poling was convicted of these things in her own life as God was parenting her and bringing her into a greater understanding of His ways. She works with Marilyn Howshall of Lifestyle of Learning and writes about her process of learning how to train her children spiritually. God showed her how unloving her behavior and attitudes were, and she stopped doing those things.

And as she learned these things herself and changed, she began to work in the hearts of her children to help them become more Christ-like.

She encourages us to “Cry out earnestly to the Lord for revelation so that you can repent and become free to love with His kind of love which is void of self-interest and self-seeking.” And as she learned these things herself and changed, she began to work in the hearts of her children to help them become more Christ-like.

The thing we need to keep in mind at all times is that We should be teaching our children to do everything out of love, not selfishness.

This ministry that emphasizes relationship training and helping children develop proper heart attitudes is Lifestyle of Learning with Marilyn Howshall and Barbie Poling. I highly recommend joining their membership site if you want to learn more about this topic here .

I wrote a lot about this subject in this post.

Sally Clarkson also teaches about this sort of thing through her blog at I Take Joy and her website.

Values and Standards

Of course, we also need to model and teach good values and standards of morality. The Bible says we are to be separate from the world – in the world, not of it. But many times, we parents who live this way with our children find that even churches try to influence us to let our children be more worldly when we are teaching them to put spiritual things first. They criticize us for not letting our children participate in things that have the appearance of evil or expose them to images and behaviors that may contaminate their purity and take away their innocence.

As parents, we must be careful not to feed our souls on immorality. We must refuse to be led by the culture. We don’t have to watch every new movie that comes out or read every book that becomes a bestseller. We are to be the leaders and change agents of culture, not be influenced by it ourselves. We have the opportunity to set higher standards in our own home, and we should do as the Lord leads in what we watch, listen to or even think about. We should model modesty and teach our children about loving our neighbors enough to not tempt them by the way we dress or act.

We should model high morals in our daily lives. We are called to live a life of integrity and honor. We should be loving and faithful to our spouse. We are supposed to be our children’s heroes. Let’s give them something to live up to. Let’s give them a lasting legacy of love and virtue that they can be proud of, and that will ground them in the truth of God’s word and His ways. The way they view their parents is the way that they will view God.

Spiritual Practices

Now to get more specific about what to actually do when we’re training our children spiritually. The family is a microcosm of the Body of Christ. So we should do in our home what the Bible admonishes Christians to do. The things that many people leave to the church to teach and to practice.

1. Pray together as a family. And pray alone, and let your children see you doing it.

2. Read the Bible together. And read the Bible alone, and let your children see you doing it. Share with them what the Lord revealed to you during your time with Him.

3. Teach about God’s ways throughout the day. Use examples from nature that illustrate spiritual principles, situations that happen during the day, tell stories like parables and teach Jesus’ parables and connect them with your daily lives.

4. Listen to worship music. As they get older, your music and their music may diverge. I’m discovering this. What I consider pleasing and uplifting is not enjoyable to my children at all. It’s hard not to be offended, but I’m learning to get over it. Still, there are some types of music that we agree on, so we keep looking and listening until we find something we can both worship to and enjoy God’s presence in.

5. Sing and worship together. If you have a child or children who play an instrument, ask the Lord to help them learn to play and sing songs of worship to Him that the whole family can sing. We sing in the spirit together sometimes. We just let Anna play her guitar. And then wait. She strums – and waits. We hum or sing whatever we hear in our spirit. She sometimes gets amazing and beautiful spontaneous worship songs. We can join in or hum along with her. You can do this without an instrument, too, but the sound of an instrument helps to get the juices flowing.

6. Take Communion together as a family. This accomplishes exactly what Jesus said it would. Every time we take Communion we are remembering (and teaching) the Gospel, the good news of what Jesus did for us on the cross. We have found this to be one of the best teaching tools and times of spiritual closeness in our family.

Letting God Lead Your Life

The very best way to teach children to put God first in their lives and follow His will for their lives is to lead them by example. This means that we have to pray about everything. We must inquire of the Lord the way so many people in the Bible did. We must spend time with the Lord asking Him what He wants us to do. If you desire the life that He intends for you, fulfilling the purpose He put you here for, you may be surprised by the training and trials you will have to go through. But if you want His will more than your own, you will be willing to do whatever He tells you and endure with patience whatever He allows to come into your life. It’s all training and preparation. Everything in this life is about our relationship with God. Drawing us closer to Him, teaching us His ways and making us more like him – that’s what this life is for.

Is that what’s happening in your life? Is that how you view life? If not, seek Him and find out if you’re missing something in your own life that is keeping you from being able to lead your children to the Lord.

Gary is still there. He has been there for a year now, and we are very ready for him to come back to us. What began as a 3-month contract has turned into a whole year, but it was only renewed for 3 months at a time every 4 months. We never knew when they might lay him off during the duration of that job. So we didn’t feel that it would be wise to move everyone down there when he might be losing that job at any time. And we didn’t hear the Lord telling us all to move there. Moving a family this size is difficult and expensive. And we’ve moved three times since Abby was born. And she’s only three years old!

The project he was working on appears to be over. It’s not finished, but it’s over. He is looking for another job, has had several interviews and will probably have another job in the next couple of weeks. We are praying about every opportunity and asking God if it’s the one He has for us. So far, the interviews have gone well, but the companies haven’t offered enough money for us to move there. But he had an interview today for a job that looks promising. We may be moving to Sealy, Texas near Houston, if this is the job that God has for Gary. It is only supposed to be for 6 months at a time, but if God wants us there, we will go.

Fiona made a picture of Three Beach Umbrellas based on this lesson on Hodge Podge Mom’s blog – Nana’s pastel lesson.

She was happy with her work. I thought it was beautiful!

We looked at Hodge Podge Mom’s blog again and noticed the dolphin fins that her daughter added. So Fiona decided to add a dolphin fin and a shark fin to her picture.

Garrett needed a little help from me. He had to cover up some things he did that were not what I asked him to do. He stuck with it and ended up with a nice looking picture.

I was proud of them and their persistence and very pleased with the results of their work.

This was a nice way to memorialize our trip to South Carolina, and I pray that Gary will be able to leave South Carolina now and take us all with him to a new place where we can all live together.

I saw a post about this project on Facebook about a month before Easter. I shared the photo, and lots of other people “liked” it. I decided I would make this for our Easter centerpiece. It looked easy and very eye-catching. So I got some soil at Walmart and grass seed and the clay pot and saucer.

Then I put them all together, building a mound of dirt over the clay pot and planting grass seed on it. Then I asked Fiona to find some sticks and build some crosses for it. She did a good job with her assignment. She also found lots of little rocks, much to my surprise, since everything is paved around here. I walked by our flower bed and happened to find a big rock just the right size for covering the entrance to our “tomb”.

It was fun watching our grass grow. Pretty soon it grew so tall we had to cut it!

I let Garrett have the privilege of mowing Golgotha.

Fiona had been telling me her idea of putting Jesus in the tomb and then taking him out on Easter morning. I looked for a Jesus figure as I did our Easter shopping, but sadly, I couldn’t find anything about Jesus among all of the Easter decorations and candy. So I asked her to make a paper doll of Jesus for our activity. She struggled with it for several hours. I kept asking how she was doing, and she said she couldn’t do it. She makes lots of things out of paper and she’s very artistic and creative, so I was surprised that she was having a hard time with this. When I went to bed, she still hadn’t made a figure of Jesus to put in the tomb.

I woke up early Easter morning and looked for a picture of Jesus on the computer that I could print out. I finally found one I liked and printed it out and took it downstairs. I thought I would surprise the kids when they got up. When I rolled away the stone to put my picture of Jesus in the tomb, this is what I found!

She surprised me instead! She had figured out how to make Him and she put Him in the tomb. I stood Him up in the entrance of the tomb to show that He had risen.

Then I put my picture of the triumphant Jesus standing over the top of the tomb.

The tomb is empty, praise be to God!

I hid the figure of Jesus in the living room, planning to have the kids go on a big hunt for Jesus. I thought I would have to give them lots of hints and tell them when they were hot and cold. Hiding Jesus was Fiona’s idea, too. I thought that was neat to go along with the disciples not knowing Him when they first saw Him after the Resurrection. I told them that a figure of Jesus was hidden somewhere in the living room, and I described how Fiona had drawn him. Kelsey walked straight over to the bookcase and lifted Him out of the Bible I had placed Him in with part of Him sticking out. So much for the BIG hunt! But they had fun, and I think they got a lot out of the activity.

Fiona really thought a lot about the story of the Resurrection and came up with a neat activity for us to do to commemorate the event. Garrett also enjoyed it a lot and acted out the whole story several times using our centerpiece. He did it for my parents while they were here. They were very impressed. It was a great activity to help them learn more about the Resurrection of Jesus.