Welcome to Family Stories, the 4th post in my Building Family Identity series! If you haven’t read them already, feel free check out the first 3 posts in the series:

• Part 1: Building Family Identity– Establishing a family identity in Christ as a foundation for your kids’ personal identities.
• Part 2: Family Core Values– Steps for writing your family core values list, and how to use it to build a distinctly Christian family identity
• Part 3: Family Traditions– Why family traditions are important for building family identity, how to be intentional about your traditions to bring your family closer to each other and to Jesus

Family stories are very important for building family identity (and, therefore, personal identity), which is why they are the focus of my final post in this series. Today we’re going to talk about different ways you can share your family stories, even if you’re not a great storyteller!

The holidays are here, and this time of year most of us have more than a few family traditions that we attempt to keep up. I love traditions (especially holiday traditions) and my husband and I have kept a fair share from our families of origin, plus we’ve thrown quite a few into the mix for our own little nuclear family.

But, there are probably some of you out there who aren’t into tradition, and I get it.

First of all, it can be exhausting…

This is the second post in the Building Family Identity series here at Disciple Mama! If you missed the first one, check it out here: Building Family Identity, Part 1

What are family core values?

If you’re serious about discipleship parenting, you’ve probably put a lot of thought into defining your family values.

Discipleship parenting means being intentional about passing our values on to our children.

If you haven’t done it yet, or if you haven’t really articulated your family values with your spouse–do it! After all, this intentionality is the whole idea behind Deuteronomy 6:6-7, right?

This is the first of 4 parts in my new Building Family Identity series. We’re entering the holiday season, and I want to spend some time this month diving into how we can be really constructive and intentional about our families and what we focus and place value on.

I grew up in a family that loved (and still loves) to play table games. Card games, board games, trivia games, you name it. So, when my husband and I had our first son, we knew we wanted to teach him to play games, too. But, we weren’t really sure how soon he’d be able to grasp the rules, take turns, and keep focused on the gameplay. One day, we just decided to give it a try, and, to our surprise, our (very young) two year old did really well. Of course we didn’t start out with anything too complicated, but there are plenty of easy games for kids out there that are fun for adults, too.

For Christian parents, discipleship of our kids has got to be the number one priority. One vital component of discipleship parenting is family worship. If you haven’t already read my post about why you should be having family worship, take a minute and read it now. I’ll wait.

Okay, so now that we’re all on the same page and you’re convinced (or you’ve been reminded) of how necessary family worship is for you and yours, let’s talk about how to make this worship time successful.

The summer is a busy time for my family. My husband is a pastor, and we have a camp meeting for two weeks in June. Then we have a small window to unpack and recover (though, honestly, my kids come home sick from camp meeting every year so far) before my husband’s yearly mission trip (another two weeks) begins.

We know we should let God lead in our lives, right? But why is it so difficult?

Last week was a tough one for me. Not my-life-is-over difficult, but it was tough. I cried a lot, and I’m not much of a crier. I wasn’t feeling great physically, I was hugely disappointed over a matter of prayer that I felt hadn’t been answered in the way I was hoping, my two year old was acting out more than usual (we’re talking serious tantrums) and my home was in chaos (partly out of my control, and partly my own fault).

I’m feeling better now, but honestly, not too much has changed. I’m away from home right now, and vacation is definitely helping. BUT, there’s a mess waiting for me, my prayer still hasn’t been answered definitively, and we’re not out of the woods yet, tantrum-wise.

Confession time: I was all excited to participate in Finding Joy in Service Day (read about Finding Joy in Service Day here) but my kids have been sick, our bathroom is being demo’d and reno’d this week, and I just started a new (temporary) part-time job. Yesterday my kids and I weren’t up to anything big, and I let it go.

Last night we broke our evening routine and got home close to 10 p.m. after some family festivities. Our kids are usually in bed by 7:30 (and we often aim for 7), so we shortened the all-important bedtime routine considerably. For us, speed is of the essence when we’re late for bedtime, because our sweet little toddler, E, has a tendency to turn into a raging ball of pure tantrum when he’s short on sleep. So, we skipped his (almond) milk, and we rushed the toothbrushing.

One thing we did not skip, though, was having family worship. E looks forward to our family worship every night (and he has since before he could talk). Sometimes, like last night, we shorten our worship time (much to E’s chagrin–choosing a shorter story than usual almost caused a meltdown), but we don’t leave it out of our routine, even when everything else is out of whack.