A Special Blessing

Thursday evening devotions are something we strive for.  We've been blessed enough that we usually can have all our children with us for our Thursday devotions.  We have Jasmine with us each Thursday, unless someone is ill.  The only drawback is that most Thursday evenings the oldest, Kim, works until 8 in the evening.  Our devotions after don't start until she gets home.

This last Thursday we decided to make it a little special.  Tasha made brownies.  I made a nice roast for dinner.  We wanted to celebrate our family.  With the anniversary of the marriage of my husband and I, we also have an anniversary as a family.  We are a blended family, and feel that God brought us together.  This year we decided to honor our children in a special way.

We have given them a week to come up with a life verse or verses.  The older children can pick their own.  My husband and I will help Laura, and we will choose for Megan.  Their are so many amazing verses in the Bible that have such a tremendous impact.  However, usually one or two verses usually stick out for a person.  This has been the case with our children, and we asked them to choose one to remind themselves with continually of the love of Christ in their lives.

My husband and I also chose to bless our older children.  Old Testament blessings were usually reserved for sons.  In our home, we decided that our children, which are all girls, should also receive a blessing from their father.  We decided that it would be an amazing right of passage or them.  Since we hadn't done this before, my husband and I took the time to discuss the blessings.  We chose sixteen as a great age for handing down blessings.  Kim and Tasha both passed sixteen, so we chose to bless them both at the same time.

DJ, my husband, is the girls' step-father.  However, their father is active duty military living far away.  Dj has raised them since they were little, and wanted to pass a blessing on to them.  I was a bit nervous about passing on a family blessing to our children.  Some people do the blessings in a ceremony.  We wanted it to be a more intimate family time.  We chose devotion night, and the night where we wanted to honor the anniversary of us as a family.  Dj wrote the blessings himself.  He told Tasha, then Kim, how much he loved them.  He talked about how wonderful they are and told them about their positive traits.  He gave them scripture verses of blessings, and even talked about their names and the meanings behind them.

Both girls were shocked, since this was a surprise for them.  They were also touched. 

There is so much negative in the world, that as parents, it is so important to bless our children.  Even as a parent, I often find myself focusing more on areas with my children that need improvement versus areas where the children are showing strong character.  True praise is like a magnet drawing hearts.  I now find myself looking for things to praise.  It's easy to find things to criticize or get frustrated about.  It's harder to focus on the wonderful character qualities a child shows.

The next day after we blessed our older two daughters, my oldest took my husband and I out for breakfast.  She had bought flowers and candy for our anniversary.  She gave us a beautiful anniversary card.  Inside was a letter for each of us in which she talked about how much she loves us and how much the blessing meant to her.  To know that we touched her life for the positive with one evening made all the planning and work so totally worth it.  And we didn't spend a ton of money or do anything extravagant.  Our words of blessing, and God's words of blessing, were plenty.