Amanda really spoke to me with her post about making time to craft and play with your kids….  Unfortunately, it has taken me almost a month since her post to make the time!  Sickness, birthdays, more snow, and everyday living took over here for a while.  I wasn’t picking times or topics – I did pick some brains, though, and I sure did pick up!  Spring cleaning got started with the putting away of Christmas decorations and hasn’t stopped.

Look at what I found while picking up!  My fridge – hey, it’s white!  Buried under the family pictures, children’s drawings, delivery menus, and football schedules were some wonderful resources that I forgot I had (Wise Words for Moms found here).

How could I have forgotten this sheet of paper?  It was just given to us during our parenting class last fall….

I remember thinking that it would be awesome if my sons had all of these “Christian Character Traits,” but wow, that seems like a lot of work!

Ehem.  Remembering again why I am here with my sons, the paper was moved to the front of a clean(er) fridge, and has been staring at me for a couple of weeks until a light bulb went off in my head.  Here is my topic!  Granted, it’s huge… and intimidating, but so is parenting, if you really think about it {{shudder}}.

The List is 51 character traits with simple definitions and Bible references to help… It’s in alphabetical order, but I’m going to jump around a bit.  I hope to get really creative (hey – that’s one of the traits!), and sometimes I might do two traits together (“neat” and “orderly” seem like they go hand in hand to me!).

We start with “Exhorter – Definition: Urge others towards love and good deeds.” Hebrews 10:24 (NIrV) says, “Let us consider how we can stir up one another to love. Let us help one another to do good works.”

In our house right now, we have a lot of exhorting going on… to jump on beds, throw toys in the house, disobey in whatever way a 4 year old big brother wants his 2 year old little brother to get in trouble…

So I drew a simple picture for each of the boys – one boy running to do “something” while the other speaks LOVE to him.

While we colored, we did a bit of role playing (Elias and I did… Donovan colored away while I prayed that this is soaking into his heart, too)… “What is your brother going to do?” “Run away!”  “What are you telling him in this picture?” “Go away, Donovan!”  “Well, look at the ‘words’ coming out of your mouth? Are you saying nice things or mean things to him?” “…nice things.”  “Great! What kind of nice things are you saying?” “I love you, Donovan!”  “Wow, that is nice!  Now, Donovan is pulling all of Mommy’s books off of the bookcase… now what nice things can you say to him to help him do good things?” “Donovan, don’t do that – you’ll get in trouble!”

We colored and talked some more… we hadn’t done any role playing yet with Elias, but I think it did work really well.  I also substituted some words in and out to help explain what “exhort” means.  The Bible versions I used (NASB and NIrV) use the words “stimulate,” “stir,” and “help” – I also used “urge,” “encourage,” “tell…” all interchangeably.

So this is a start.  Not the most creative start, but sometimes we just need a start of some kind…

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