Highlights

  • Have you ever gotten to the end of a busy day and realized that you were essentially dragged through it by the demands you live under? (Location 261)
  • We’ve found that discipling our boys doesn’t happen at a specific time each day; rather it has become the framework we use throughout the entire day. Discipling happens in the context of the habits we form and the rhythms we keep. (Location 267)
  • If you feel like life is moving at a frenetic pace and you’re struggling to keep your own heart centered, let alone your family’s, this book is strong medicine. (Location 274)

PART 1 INTRODUCTION

REIMAGINING HOUSEHOLD HABITS AS GOSPEL LITURGIES

  • I was thinking about how this was a normal night, which means their last image of me most days is of this wild taskmaster raging about how if they don’t get pj’s on this instant there will be dramatic physical consequences. (Location 304)
  • wondered if they sensed the irony when, before turning out the lights, I gave them a short bedtime prayer and told them that God loves them and I do too. I wondered what they think love means. (Location 305)
  • “This is our normal,” I murmured to myself. And that wasn’t a good thing. (Location 308)
  • In fact, I had been using time outside of my law practice to write about how habits of work and technology are really patterns of worship that deeply form us. (Location 317)
  • These small patterns I had with Lauren and the boys—our waking, our meals, our car rides, our bedtimes—were all moments of worship too, guided by habits that could accurately be seen as liturgies. Liturgies of what? Now that I thought about it, probably liturgies of efficiency, impatience, rush, or frustration. (Location 321)
  • To steward the habits of your family is to steward the hearts of your family. And that’s what this book is about. (Location 364)
  • Good or bad, a rut is a rut, and our brains love ruts. (Location 387)
Seeing Ordinary Habits as Liturgies of Worship
  • Consider habits of the household as an effort to unite education and formation. (Location 407)
  • Think about them as ways to align our heads and our hearts so we don’t just know the right thing to do, we also love doing the right thing. (Location 408)
  • The most Christian way to think about our households is that they are little “schools of love,” places where we have one (Location 440)
  • vocation, one calling: to form all who live here into lovers of God and neighbor. (Location 441)
  • There is no escaping habits and formation in the family. We become our habits, and our kids become us. The family, for better or worse, is a formation machine. (Location 469)
  • Our best parenting comes when we think less about being parents of children and more about being children of God. (Location 476)
  • Which means who our children are becoming is tightly connected to who we are becoming—personally and communally. (Location 520)
  • For that reason, when we think about Christian formation in a household, we are thinking in at least three directions: forming parents, forming children, and forming a family. (Location 521)
Forming Parents
  • Parenting your children is not just about what you are doing in their lives. It is first about the work God is doing in your (Location 526)
Forming Children
  • These chapters focus on the areas where we get to pick the routines that shape our children: bedtimes, moments of discipline, screentime, and family devotions. (Location 539)
Forming Families
  • For example, one way to think about family culture is to think about what habits and norms our friends (Location 547)
  • Another way to think about family culture is what we send out into the world when we befriend others and do our work in the world. (Location 548)
  • In following the ordinary pace of a day, I hope to draw your attention over and over to one of the other central themes of this book: that the greatest spiritual work happens in the normal moments of domestic life. (Location 554)

PART 2 HABITS OF THE HOUSEHOLD

CHAPTER 1 WAKING

  • I gather him up into my arms. Like all kids in crisis, he must feel love before he can talk about it. In a moment the screaming stops. As he quiets, I say, “Coulter, what’s wrong, buddy?” (Location 621)
  • Most days, we wake up to our own monsters, desperately in need of a heavenly parent to remind us the truth about reality—that we are loved by a good God, and because of him, everything is going to be okay. (Location 642)
  • Which story of reality do we habitually rehearse every morning? Is it setting us free? Or is it enslaving us to lies? (Location 658)
  • When the first thing I do in the morning is roll over, grab my phone, and begin scanning work emails, I wake to the monsters of performance. (Location 659)
  • When I begin the morning in social media, I wake to the monsters of comparison and envy. (Location 660)
  • When I begin the morning in the news headlines, the monsters of fear and anger nearly jump through the screen. (Location 661)
  • when I jump up and immediately start the rush to get everyone out the door on time), I wake to the monster of busyness. The story of reality is how there is always too much to do and never enough time to do it. (Location 663)
  • All of these lies are like the monsters in Coulter’s closet. Intellectually, I know that they aren’t the real stories of the world. But practically, it sure seems like they are because I rehearse feeling them every morning. (Location 665)
  • At best, the morning rituals of a household support the reality that God loves us and that his love is the defining fact of the universe. (Location 670)
  • But at worst, our habits of waking indulge alternative realities where the universe depends on us and what we do today. (Location 672)
  • We must see that the first role of a parent is not to get everyone up on time but to root our household habits of waking in the truth of the gospel. (Location 675)
  • For in the story of God, our call is not simply to wake up our bodies each day but to awaken our hearts to God’s love. (Location 676)
Three Habits to Let the Light In
  • Habit of Waking 1: Try a Short Kneeling Prayer at Your Bedside upon Waking (Location 709)
  • If I wake up to exhaustion, I might put it into a request: “Lord, don’t let me snap at the kids just because I chose to go to bed late.” (Location 721)
  • “Lord, may I love and serve my children this morning as you loved and served me.” (Location 725)
  • None of the spiritual disciplines promise to make our life simple or give us eternal patience with our children. None of them will banish our worries and exhaustions forever at the snap of a finger. (Location 735)
  • Habit of Waking 2: Make a Habit of Looking to the Scriptures before Looking at Your Smartphone (Location 741)
  • We are hungry for the gaze of someone who loves us. (Location 749)
  • This is what we are doing when we turn our gaze to the screen first thing in the morning. (Location 751)
  • We see the hazy visions of who we wish we were as we scroll social media. We see refractions of our ambitions and worries in work emails and task lists. (Location 758)
  • One of the best ways to do that is to cultivate the morning ritual of ignoring your phone until after you have found the gaze of God in Scripture. (Location 767)
  • Many, many mornings it means they also get a book, or a coloring page, and we have some minutes of quiet before we start breakfast. (Location 776)
  • Habit of Waking 3: Practice a Short Moment of Gathering and Sending the Family (Location 791)
  • Lauren will say something like these words: “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, thank you for this day.” And we will all repeat it. Then she will say, “Bless us as we work, study, and play.” And we say it too. She goes on: “Be present with us, and in all we do, may we bring glory and honor to you.” (Location 809)
  • We had this before, but previously it was the frenzied call for everyone to “get in the car” or “get to the bus.” Now prayer was transitioning us, and Lauren and I both began to feel the way this new schedule was shaping us. (Location 816)
  • There is no tiredness like the (Location 833)
  • tiredness of a parent. And that is not just a physical reality, it is a spiritual one, which is why we parents desperately need habits that help pull the curtains back and wake our sleepy hearts to the light of Jesus. (Location 833)
  • CHAPTER 2 MEALTIMES (Location 845)
    • Note: .h2
  • A vacation with young children is really just going somewhere scenic and (Location 849)
  • working overtime shifts of parenting hours. (Location 850)
  • It struck me that the difference between people who happen to live together and families who befriend each other are rhythms of conversation at mealtimes. (Location 876)
  • Food and Conversation in the Story of God (Location 877)
    • Note: .h3
  • Don Everts and the Barna Group found in their study of Christian households that the families who were “spiritually vibrant” shared one amazing thing in common—they had loud tables.6 (Location 893)
  • A keystone habit is one that supports a lot of other good habits. (Location 897)
  • At this point, Lauren has said one thousand “not yets” to the ravaging pack of children who have begged and pleaded for yet another snack before dinner, yet as we begin to herd said pack to the table, suddenly three out of four of them have an epiphany of something else they want to do and scatter. We (Location 916)
  • Fight one breaks out over who will light it. I declare that I alone will light it. (Location 920)
  • Ash protests—“We have to clean again!?” (Location 936)
  • First, note that family dinner is not in any sense practical. It’s far more efficient for us to each have a microwave dinner on our own varied schedules. But the tributaries of planning that lead to this moment of family dinner signal something—that communing, (Location 942)
  • not consuming, is the household’s center of gravity. (Location 944)
  • The fact is, in family, if you’re adverse to messy prayers, then you’re adverse to prayer. If you can’t tolerate spills, you’ll avoid eating with kids. If you don’t like conflict in relationship, then you’re not going to like relationship. If you can’t handle a mess in the kitchen, you can’t handle (Location 980)
  • If you can’t stomach awkward moments, you won’t much like the conversation that leads to the great moments. (Location 982)
  • But Drew’s words helped me realize that I was indeed mixing up entertainment and hospitality. Entertaining guests is when you clean everything, make up nice plates of food and batches of drinks, and maybe get a sitter for the kids. (Location 1013)
  • At best, entertaining is where we honor our guests by offering an experience of comfort and beauty. (Location 1014)
  • At worst, entertaining is where we honor ourselves by showing off what we can pull off. (Location 1015)

CHAPTER 3 DISCIPLINE

  • Hence the problem: moments of discipline are so hard because there is such a wide gap between what I want and what they need. What I want is control. What they need is loving, engaged discipline. And discipline is not a tool for controlling behavior. (Location 1075)
  • when we see our children as problems to manage instead of image-bearers to be discipled, we end up making moments of discipline about our convenience instead of their discipleship. (Location 1115)

The Pyramid of Discipline

Habit 1: Establish Loving Authority
  • Loving authority is the foundation of discipline as discipleship. (Location 1128)
  • This might be picking a child up or intervening with a strong presence of tone or body language. (Location 1128)
  • child is not autonomous. No one is. No one should be. The greatest harm any of us can do to ourselves and others is to seek a world without limits or authority. (Location 1135)
Habit 2: Pause for a Moment
  • Making some kind of pause a habit before discipline can allow us a chance to move from our instinctual reactions of anger or frustration to love and discipleship. (Location 1139)
  • This might be a timeout for your child or it may be a timeout for you to take a minute.7 It may be a pause at the door before you open it to address the yelling going on inside or just a deep breath before you talk about what someone just said to you. (Location 1143)
Habit 3: Pray and Talk to Yourself
  • In these moments, we are dealing not just with our kids’ selfishness over not sharing a video game controller but with our selfishness over not wanting to be interrupted to deal with this for the third time in five minutes. (Location 1152)
  • And only I can do the work to realize that my anger in that moment is not a product of their misbehavior but my impatience. (Location 1154)
  • For example, on the way to a moment of discipline (or during that pause I might be taking), I often pray to myself, “Lord, I am also [insert heart condition of child in trouble]. Help me to see that we both need to be parented by you.” (Location 1157)
  • For example, if a child has hit his brother, it is very helpful to remind myself that I am also an angry person who wants to control the world through force. If they have disobeyed, I use a prayer to remind myself that I am also a proud person who dislikes authority. (Location 1160)
  • I too want someone who will save me from myself, but I also want someone who will comfort me. When I remember that in prayer, I become more willing to offer that spirit of both grace and truth to my kid. (Location 1166)
Habit 4: Use Body Language and Space More Than Words and Threats
  • When you can set a child in your lap to talk, or sit down on a bed beside a teenager, or kneel down to the eye level of a six-year-old, you should. (Location 1175)
  • we can put a hand on their shoulder or look at them with love and not a scowl, we should. Remember, in the end, love is far more powerful than anger. (Location 1176)
Habit 5: Be Relentless in Seeking Understanding
  • Discipline without love is punishment for an act, but discipline as discipleship is training a child to become self-reflective. (Location 1191)
  • This means asking questions that lead them from knowing “what they did” to understanding why they did (Location 1193)
  • (1) What did you do? (2) What did you think was going to happen when you did that? (3) What did you want the other person to feel when you did that? (Location 1195)
Habit 6: Think Carefully about Consequences
  • Consequences are helpful only insofar as they move us one step closer to reconciliation. (Location 1208)
  • one of my go-to consequences if a child is disobedient or disrespectful is that they work a chore alongside me. Instead of forcing them away where we both stew in our anger, we are forced into the same space, into cooperation, and into words that start to soften us. (Location 1221)
Habit 7: Insist on Apologies as Confession
  • Think of apologizing or confessing as ways of saying the things we desperately don’t want to say so we can mean the things we desperately want to mean. (Location 1232)
  • when someone confesses or apologizes, we have to look someone in the eye and say exactly what they did out loud. Mumbling is not enough. “Okay, fine! Sorry!” is not enough. Looking at the ground and saying something is not enough, either. This is not because I’m trying to be a tyrant, it is because liturgy matters. (Location 1234)
Habit 8: Always End in Reconciliation
  • this process is not over until they do a Brothers’ Hug. This means a hug that lasts until both (not just one of them) cracks a smile or laughs. (Location 1246)

The Pyramid in Practice

CHAPTER 4 SCREENTIME

  • If we do not teach them that silence is a sacred place where God speaks to us, then screens will make sure they never, ever discover it. If we do not teach them that vulnerable and embodied friendship is the heart of the good life, then screens will relentlessly nudge them toward “connecting” and “liking” their way to endemic loneliness. (Location 1363)

Limits as the Guardrails to the Good Life

  • when it comes down to it, it’s simply a key part of your job description to protect your child from their infinite desire. (Location 1376)
  • “Yes, this is going to mean I get fewer breaks and have to be more involved and have to manage constant requests, but this is for their formation, which means it is a fight worth fighting well.” (Location 1406)
  • it is almost always harder to use something responsibly than it is just to stay away entirely. (Location 1411)
  • Curation means first, that we are setting limits, and second, that we are choosing well within those limits. (Location 1412)

The First Step of Curation: Setting Limits

  • I have taken a lot from Andy Crouch’s wisdom in The Tech-Wise Family that car time is conversation time. (Location 1431)
The Second Step of Curation: Choosing Well

CHAPTER 5 FAMILY DEVOTIONS

  • When it comes to family spiritual formation, it’s not about perfect practice, it’s about moving from nothing to something. (Location 1598)
  • interviews and interrogations happen over empty tables. Conversations happen over messy ones. So the beginning of family devotions is just that—a crowded, messy table. (Location 1614)
  • God is crazy about loud children (and self-conscious adults) who don’t exactly know how to do the worship thing right but come and give it a shot anyway, because they know that some little bit of God is better than the nothing they have. (Location 1658)
  • Picture catechisms like the first set of building blocks a kid gets. They’re simple wooden blocks, but they’re sturdy and they’ll stay in the family for generations. (Location 1694)
  • Over and over in Scripture, Jesus tells us that the short, earnest prayers are the real ones, and the long, flowery ones are masquerading as religion trying to earn God’s attention when all he wants is a desperate heart. (Location 1738)
  • when we pray before dinner, or when I ask them to pray after family devotions, it always has one thing in common: brevity. It’s real, but it’s short. (Location 1740)
  • Teaching our kids to pray is a work done mostly on the fly. Less in the pews and at Sunday school tables and more in the back seats of cars and the ends of grocery lines. (Location 1745)
  • we might start by teaching them that he’s an approachable God; he’s a warm, smiling father who won’t send them away for immaturity. (Location 1747)
  • “What do I need God to help me with? What am I thankful to him for?” (Location 1758)
  • But like the rest of us, children are hungry for patterns and will pick up on them. (Location 1761)

CHAPTER 6 MARRIAGE

  • It is a terrible fiction to imagine we can be good mothers and fathers without being good husbands and wives. (Location 1780)
  • But marriage being really hard is not a sign that you are failing, it is a sign that marriage is working. (Location 1814)

Date Night as a Habit of Rehearsing the Covenant

  • So there should be a premium value in parenting on having time where you can remove yourself from parenting. Parenting is really hard work, and like all work, we need a break from it to do it well. That is why childcare is so valuable to marriage. (Location 1843)

Habitually Giving the Gift of Time Alone

  • go buy yourself dinner, go shop, go drive, go sit, go stare at the sky, or just go do whatever else it is you need to do to feel like a regular human being again.” (Location 1859)

The Habit of Parenting Check-Ins

  • What are the kids going through? (Location 1887)
  • How are we responding? What do we feel good about? What do we feel guilty about? How can we accept God’s grace for that guilt, and how can we lean into his call for what we should do better? (Location 1887)

CHAPTER 7 WORK

  • Deep down in a child is the desire to be included in the work of the person who loves them. (Location 1932)
Practicing Habits of Talking about Work
  • “Why do you have to go to work today?” “I get to go to work—which I’m actually really thankful for. Because God made us all to work. Some people don’t have a job they like, and some don’t have a job at all. Work is a blessing.” (Location 1966)
  • “What do you do at work?” Just like God helps people, at work I get to help people by . . . Just like God created the world, at work I get to create things, (Location 1968)
  • “Why do we have to do chores?” Just like God organized the world and made it a good place for us to live, it’s our job to keep our house organized so it’s a good place for us to live. (Location 1971)
Practicing Habits of Inviting Children into the Work of the Household
  • When I invite them to help prep a meal with me (especially one on one), they get the pleasure I got in the garage. There is a particular bond to helping your parent, and this is a dynamic to nurture and grow. (Location 1998)
3. Practicing Habits of Letting Children See the Work outside the Household

CHAPTER 8 PLAY

  • Habits of play must then be a practice of the Christian household because they echo the kingdom to come. There are infinite ways to do this, but I suggest three as easy places to begin: Habitually read imaginative stories to them. Habitually accept their invitations to play. Habitually send them out to play on their own. (Location 2114)
  • Habitually Read Imaginative Stories to Them (Location 2117)
  • There is a daily checklist on our refrigerator where she marks whether each child has been read to, or, for the older ones, whether they have spent time reading. (Location 2122)
  • We need big imaginations to be able to handle the big visions of the Bible, lest they mean nothing to us. When we engage with literature—for example, by reading the famous modern fantasy stories of our time, like Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, or The Chronicles of Narnia—we exercise this capacity.5 (Location 2127)

Habitually Accept Their Invitations to Play

  • every evening right after work is a time when the kids know my phone is getting turned off and we’re doing what (Location 2157)
  • they want to do. Lauren usually reserves half an hour in the morning when tasks get set aside and she can say yes to play or reading to them. Saturday mornings are also boys’ mornings, where Lauren reliably gets to sleep in and the boys and I go find an adventure. (Location 2158)
  • as kids get older, this will look much less like imaginative play and more like cultivating enchantment with the world. (Location 2161)
  • Little takes more work than playing with children, which means we can’t do it all the time. But we can have expected rhythms of it. (Location 2167)

Habitually Send Them Out to Play on Their Own

  • no parent can, or should, always accept their children’s invitations to play. (Location 2169)
  • we shouldn’t feel guilty about that. (Location 2169)
  • On the contrary, we should recognize that when we say no to play and send them out on their own, something important is happening. Whether this is sending kids to the back yard or telling your teen to turn off the TV and go take a hike, instructing them to go out and engage with the world on their own means we invite them to get comfortable with the struggle against boredom (which is really just the struggle against the fallen imagination) and do the good work of play by themselves. (Location 2169)
  • It is entirely possible to unconsciously indoctrinate our children into our broken view of the world, that life is fundamentally about what we can accomplish and there isn’t time for much else. (Location 2175)
  • One of the claims of this book is that Christian families cannot default to the American rule of life—we must fight for better habits. (Location 2178)

Practicing the Habit of Sabbath

  • For our family, sabbathing includes the obvious rest from the week’s work—but it is much more than that too. It is not enough to stop the nine-to-five and pause the laundry, we also try to start the play and the rest. With young children, we try to light a candle sometime on Saturday evening to mark the beginning of our sabbath. The communal play begins then. It may be an outing for the kids, and later it likely means a night when Lauren or I go to see friends for conversation, invite someone over, or maybe have a night when we just stay home and enjoy something together that doesn’t involve cleaning or emails. (Location 2192)
  • But part of our sabbath rest as parents means getting together with my extended family, sharing a meal, and letting the cousins all play together. This is chaotic, to be sure (there are six of us brothers and sisters, and fifteen and counting kids between us all), but it is equally restful to have all the other parents around to help share the work and to find the rest of good food and conversation with a family that feels like friends. (Location 2203)
Implicit Memory and Rhythms of Play
  • Child psychologists write about something called implicit memory. It’s the part of you that remembers things without being aware that you are remembering them. (Location 2211)

CHAPTER 9 CONVERSATION

  • I was happy because I had an evening to linger in conversation with my mom and dad, not just as a child but as their friend. (Location 2263)
  • I might venture to say that this moment, repeated over and over in different ways, is the ultimate goal of family: to make friends of each other. (Location 2267)
  • And the consummation of friendship, of course, is conversation. (Location 2268)
  • Here are three practical habits I have found help this sacred effort: Pursue one-on-one moments. Practice conversation as a way to heal trauma. Model vulnerability. (Location 2270)
Pursue One-on-One Moments
  • In writing a letter to their older selves, I don’t hesitate to use bigger words, share my own fears and advice, or describe what Lauren and I were going through when they were five and didn’t know that parents “went through” anything. (Location 2276)
  • The second thing that I do on their birthdays is I take them out to breakfast—with just me. (Location 2280)
  • As some of the kids have gotten older, the questions are more nuanced and run deeper: What do you love doing? What’s hard about life right now? Who is your best friend? What do you think you’re good at? What do you want to get better at? When do you (Location 2285)
  • nervous? What’s your favorite book? What do you find yourself praying about often? What do you think about when you lie in bed? What do you wish you were allowed to do that you’re not? (Location 2286)
  • Plucking guitars or raking leaves, baking bread or stoking a fire, fishing, knitting, hiking, stargazing, sweeping floors, or even running errands—there are all sorts of activities that are wonderful because they keep two people in the same place and are mindless enough to allow us to engage each other in real conversation. Find these things, pick ones your kids like, and use them to find each other in conversation. (Location 2303)
  • Practice Conversation as a Way to Heal Trauma (Location 2317)
  • Conversation heals trauma. This is true for children in the back yard, teenagers in the difficulties of high school, and adults who carry their dark stories. (Location 2349)
Model Vulnerability
  • But vulnerability is not a given, and usually a child is honest because a parent is honest first. A child is vulnerable because a parent demonstrates it. A child engages in conversation because a parent seeks them out. This is the great (Location 2375)

CHAPTER 10 BEDTIME

  • I am the kind of person who uses anger to control my family when I should use love to console and shepherd my family. (Location 2408)
  • In a very real sense, parenting is one long process of revealing who you are. And usually that is not pretty. (Location 2415)
  • But just like all these habits of the household, bedtime liturgies aren’t solutions to make bedtime easy or prevent us from being bad parents, they are rhythms that remind us we can rest in God’s goodness anyway. (Location 2445)
  • Our habits won’t change God’s love for us, but God’s love for us can and should change our habits. (Location 2447)
Bedtime Liturgies That Help Us Rest in the Work of Jesus
  • A TICKLE BLESSING Suddenly, and with lots of squirming: Parent: Dear Lord, may this child find much joy and laughter, all of his/her days. Child: Uncontrollable laughter, until they can barely breathe Parent: Amen. (Location 2458)
  • A BOUNCY BLESSING While bouncing the bed around the child, and trying to get as much giggling and flopping as possible: Parent: Dear Lord, may this child bounce from blessing to blessing, all of his/her days. Child: Bouncing and laughing Parent: Amen. (Location 2470)
  • BLESSING FOR THE BODY OF A CHILD WHILE LYING IN BED As prayer progresses, move hands to touch each part of the body: Jesus, bless their feet, may they bring good news. Bless their legs, may they carry on in times of suffering. Bless their backs, may they be strong enough to bear the burdens of others. Bless their arms to hold the lonely, and their hands to do good work. Bless their necks, may they turn their heads toward the poor. Bless their ears to discern truth, their eyes to see beauty, and their mouths to speak encouragement. Bless their minds, may they grow wise. And finally, bless their hearts, may they grow to love you—and all that you have made—in the right order. (Location 2481)
  • A SHORT BLESSING FOR LITTLES Perhaps with a sign of the cross on their head: Parent: God loves you. Jesus died for you. And the Holy Spirit is with you. Goodnight. (Location 2521)
  • A BEDTIME BLESSING OF GOSPEL LOVE Said perhaps with a hand on your child’s face or head. Parent: Do you see my eyes? Child: Yes. Parent: Can you see that I see your eyes? Child: Yes. Parent: Do you know that I love you? Child: Yes. Parent: Do you know that I love you no matter what bad things you do? Child: Yes. Parent: Do you know that I love you no matter what good things you do? Child: Yes. Parent: Who else loves you like that? Child: God does. Parent: Even more than me? Child: Yes. Parent: Rest in that love. (Location 2561)
  • A SQUEEZE BLESSING During a really big, really tight hug: Parent: Dear Lord, may this child feel your love wrap around them, all of his/her days. Child: Struggles to break free and hopefully laughs Parent: Amen. (Location 2586)

PART 3 EPILOGUE

  • Proverbs says that “where there is no vision, the people perish.”2 Put another way, to keep our hearts alive, we need to see the future. (Location 2644)
  • So we must practice imagining the not yet in a way that calls us to change in the now. Writing out an age chart is one such practice. (Location 2700)
  • In the space next to your column, write down the ages of each of your kids. (Location 2704)
  • Now, in the space to the right of the chart, name some seasons you notice. When will you all be under the same roof? (Location 2705)
  • Finally, to the right of each dream, write down a corresponding habit. (Location 2708)
  • Now, pray. Ideally, do this with your spouse or show this to your spouse and pray together about it. Maybe use it for a parenting check-in on a date night. (Location 2711)
  • I often think about how the gospel posture of a parent is opening yourself up to be hurt by your children, while committing to loving them anyway. That’s what Jesus did for us, after all. (Location 2739)
  • For a fascinating and surprisingly beautiful book on seeking families as the place of spiritual formation, rather than seeking solitude and retreats, see Ernest Boyer Jr., Finding God at Home: Family Life as Spiritual Discipline (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1984). (Location 2811)