Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Prayer Time Struggles

The description of my blog says "struggles and successes." Time to post a struggle.

I think prayer time is important for a family. My husband agrees. So we have implemented a family prayer time that is held fairly regularly - several times a week, anyway - since fall at least. That ought to be enough time for the kids to get used to it, right?

Prayer time starts with taking requests. My husband often does this but lately the kids have wanted a turn at writing them out. We keep them in a notebook. So there are spelling questions and suchlike. This part takes FAR too long, in my opinion.

Then we usually sit in a circle on the living room floor for the prayers. We sometimes hold hands, but that usually causes more troubles than it's worth. "I don't want to hold HIS hand," or kids scooting around the circle once they realize who they're sitting by to avoid hand holding.

One of the kids begins and prays and we pass the notebook around to help us to remember the requests. Bob always ends up, so that none of the requests are missed.

Sounds straightforward, right? Well, it's almost always a struggle. Bad attitudes, wiggly kids, opened eyes, distractions, etc. etc. etc.

Today I got so frustrated that I got up and left in the middle of it.

Yep, I thought I'd be honest and share our struggles. No preaching, please!

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