Inspired for More Positive Changes in 2023
We went back to my mom’s in Iowa for Christmas this year, as we have always done. It was a restful two weeks with family. I was able to get my mind away from work which I needed. We attended a beautiful Christmas Eve service at a growing, thriving church. I read a bunch of articles I had been filing away during the busy run-up to Christmas. I watched the first three episodes of season three of “The Chosen.” I set aside some time to work on a presentation for a men’s group at my church. Although I always fall off on my daily habits when I’m away from home, I managed to work out every other day and write a little.
My kids and I slept soundly in my boyhood bedroom, bundled under three or four blankets to brave the arctic temperatures of our unheated upstairs (just kidding, Mom). We woke up every morning to my mom cooking us a good breakfast of ham, eggs, and waffles. My son hit in the batting cage with my brother and my niece, a mini baseball boot camp for him. We got some fun quality time with my adorable 18-month niece. We played more games this year as a family – Apples to Apples, Mind the Gap, and a lot of Nerts (multi-player competitive solitaire).
But something was gnawing at me. Even with all that good stuff, we still got sucked into binge-watching a show on Netflix. More than that, I noticed that my kids were quick to default to their devices when they felt bored. It seemed that if my mom or I weren’t doing something with them or something they didn’t like came on the TV, their screens were up within seconds.
I bought a book called “Honey for a Child’s Heart” in early December after seeing it mentioned twice in The Epoch Times. I started reading it while at my mom’s. I originally purchased it because it was known for being a terrific compilation of children’s books. But I fell in love with the first ten chapters, where the author Gladys Hunt writes about the importance and magic of good books. She wrote about how their families grew up with her parents reading books aloud at night to their children and how she passed that down to her kids.
I woke up early the following day, explaining my frustration to my mom at the breakfast table. I said I felt like I was doing so much right, but it still wasn’t enough. The kids were doing great with homeschooling and go to a great co-op every Monday. We found a terrific church/Sunday school for us. I spend a lot of time with them at home and helping with their sports. We weren’t hooked on social media or wasting hundreds of hours on mindless video games. But I wanted to go farther.
With further encouragement and ideas from my mom, I was inspired to make positive changes going into the new year. I downloaded Laura Ingall Wilder’s “The Little House in the Big Woods” audiobook from Audible for our 8-hour drive back to Chicago. The audio was 3-1/2 hours long, so I split it into four hour-long segments. I heard some murmuring at the beginning. My kids drifted off into sleep at times while we listened. But overall, they heard more than what they would let on. By the end, they weren’t fighting it, and we had some laughs together about the book’s stories.
The next day at work, I met with two outside consultants who have been helping us for the past few months. Both men are a little older than me and had also homeschooled their families. At the end of our meeting, I asked for their advice at home and asked if they did things like reading aloud at night as a family. One guy said he was strict with TV (no cable) and devices for their kids. He noted that they read books like Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” series aloud as a family. He said they also had nights where they all sat together close in the living room, each reading from their own book.
The other guy said he had just asked his college-aged kids over Christmas for their favorite homeschooling memories. He said that they remembered his reading to them at night before bed. They also loved their simple annual traditions together as a family.
I laughed and said it reminded me of the Little House book we had just listened to on our ride back to Chicago. As the chapters went through the various seasons of life in the Midwest, Laura talked about how she loved the coziness of the winter months when her dad came into the house earlier. Because the days were shorter, her dad couldn’t work outside as late, so he spent more time inside with the family. Her dad would get out his fiddle, and they would sing and dance as a family or listen to stories from his childhood or ones passed down from his parents and grandparents.
It made me think that almost all of us now have this luxury of time together that Laura wrote about. Even during the summer months, most of us don’t have to work hard outside until 9 pm, finally shuffling into the house exhausted after a hard day. We all have things pretty simple if we want to live that way. The same modern conveniences that make things easier can make things more complicated for us if we let them. But we don’t have to – it is our choice if we have the discipline.
In our first week back in Chicago, we made some positive changes. We kept off the TV and played some fun board games instead. We started teaching my son how to play solitaire so he can soon join in our Nerts games. At bedtime, after reading the day’s entry from “Jesus Calling” and the new Tim Tebow devotional for kids, I read a chapter from a book for each of the kids. Tonight, I plan on starting the second Laura Ingalls Wilder book called “Farmer Boy,” reading together as a family from our living room. I also want a weekly movie night where we take turns picking from good family movies. There is still some work to do with the devices. I prefer not to set automatic time schedules to manage that, mostly because I want the kids to build up the discipline to make the right choice.
Not all of it will be easy, but I know it is the right thing to do for our family and worth the effort to work through these changes.
Image credit: Alamy