God came to give your family abundant life too!  All too often, however, stress and strife erode the fabric of what God intended for family:  joy, peace and connection. 

I remember there were years when my kids were growing up that we were influenced by teaching that was very obedience focused.

The subconscious pressure this put on “getting” our kids to OBEY contributed to a culture and atmosphere of intensity and heaviness that was more pervasive than joy! We tried to obey the commandment to “Be joyful!” or “Put on joy!”, not fully realizing that those were code words for “pretend to be happy” in the community we were in .

I finally realized that something had to change! As we began to study grace again and come out from under the pressure of performance we began to see joy blossom in our kids from the inside out. We began to see them thrive in ways we hadn’t seen in awhile. And we realized that part of thriving is failing, especially when it comes to developmental ages and stages.

Walk in the grace that Jesus died to give you when it comes to parenting. You need this so you can give that grace to your kids. Does this mean you don’t teach obedience or discipline them? No!! (Please love them enough to teach them this). But it DOES mean that you allow them to fail without judging them or over-correcting. It means you choose prayer and laughter over fear and disapproval. It means you spend more time celebrating them than disciplining and let true joy spring up from within you. It also means you learn to give yourself grace for your own parenting failures. This is what draws our kids to Jesus.

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