A Fathers Blessing

I am writing this blog for one primary reason; for my kids.  So that they can look back and connect with their childhood, and see our relationship from my eyes.  And because of this, I want to record everything I do with them. This post documents is a new chapter in what I am doing.  James and Bella, I love you!

A good friend of mine taught me a wonderful tool a while back that I am now implementing into my daily routine with my kids.  Its called The Fathers Blessing.
The fathers blessing is a Hebrew tradition in which the on friday nights the father in the household go to each of his children individually, and prays a blessing over them.
There is so much power in this, there is power in spoken words.  God SPOKE everything into existence, we spread the good news through SPEAKING, and there are so many more examples throughout Scripture that support verbal as powerful through God.  I can either build up my kids, or crush them to the dust by my words.  This fathers blessing was used as a way of affirming and blessing the children in the household, the spiritual leader was praying blessings and praise over his children.   Their self esteem as to who they are in Christ is going to pivot greatly on the relationship they have with their earthly father.  If they have a bad experience with me, never received affirmation, or was ridiculed or was seldom told that I was proud of them, etc, then the word father would mean very little to them.  So when they begin to grasp the reality of God being our heavenly father, this wouldn't be a very appealing concept.  They can't connect easily the joy and awesome identity that comes with knowing the creator of the universe highly favors me and loves me!  Another GIANT aspect of this is that they see me daily PRAYING out loud, talking to God, as MY father.  So they might see and become accustomed to the act and necessity of prayer.
Now no matter my past growing up, I can't allow that to dictate what God has called me to be.  So James and Bella, when you start to understand God as our father, you need to be excited about this!  You need to know from me, that a father loves you, holds you in the highest regard, is proud of you, and nothing you can ever do will make me love you any more or less!
So for a little while now, I have been doing this with my kids at night.  The traditional way to do this is over the dinner table.  But I do it at night, and I do it every night instead of just Friday.  I go to them individually, tuck them in, hold my hand on their head (an important part of the Jewish tradition is the physical touch while blessing) and pray for them out loud.
Here is an example of a Fathers blessing prayer, obviously I don't say this exactly, but I cover the main points. 

“Father, I receive, welcome, and acknowledge each of my children as a delightful blessing from You. I speak Your blessings upon them and over them.
“Children, I bless you in the name of Jesus, proclaiming the blessings of God, my Redeemer, upon you. May He give you wisdom, a reverential fear of God, and a heart of love.
“May He create in you the desire to attend to His words, a willing and obedient heart that you may consent and submit to His sayings and walk in His ways. May your eyes look straight ahead with purpose for the future. May your tongue be as the pen of a ready writer, writing mercy and kindness upon the tablets of your heart. May you speak the truth in love. May your hands do the works of the Father; may your feet walk the paths that He has foreordained for you.
“I have no greater joy than this, to hear that my children are living their lives in truth.
“May the Lord prepare you and your future mate to love and honor one another, and may He grant to your union upright sons and daughters who will live in accordance with His Word. May your source of livelihood be honorable and secure, so that you will earn a living with your own hands. May you always worship God in spirit and in truth.
“I pray above all things that you may always prosper and be in health, even as your soul prospers. I know the thoughts and plans that I have for you, says the Lord, thoughts and plans for welfare and peace and not for evil, to give you hope in your final outcome.
“In the name of Jesus, my Lord and my God, Amen.”

Bro Time!

Last week was James' birthday and with the party planning and such, we figured it would be better for him to move it to Jan 14th.  Which is going to work out fine, because next week (Feb 4th) I have a Daddy Daughter Dance to take Bella to.


So on to Bro Time!  This weekend was a hard one to do, because we were moving into a new house this weekend, so I was sore and tired from moving, but it was a nice break to take James out.

I realized something yesterday.  When Bella was born, Kathryn said 'Mark, leave her alone, give her a fighting chance to be normal and not weird'.  But now that I'm spending one-on-one time with them both, that is going to be hard to do.  Besides the fact that both (Bella especially) are developing their own weird quite well on their own.

Lowes is a really cool business, they have weekly projects that you can take your kids to at 10am on Saturdays.  You go in the back and they have a room setup with tons of families with kids building little projects.  These projects are cool, simple things like bird houses, picture frames etc.  This week just happened to be a wooden T-Rex!  Perfect....

Just like Bella, I took James to the store to buy a treat, Swedish Fish are the entree of the day.

Then I thought we could do some good ol' tree climbing.  Even though I weigh 240 lbs, James was impressed by the fact that I could get higher than him....We actually trash talked each other, if the other was too tired to run, or climb (usually me..lol) the other (usually James..lol) would cry out 'WEAK! YOU ARE WEAK!' 

We then had to do some moving while it was still daylight, but after that, we did one of the coolest things I could imagine.  We played with Batman Legos while watching the Batman Cartoon!  Loved it.

Then....we took a short nap while watching more Batman......

After all of that, we added one more thing, he helped get the fire going in our new fireplace.

Bella, Jan 14th, 2012

Being the first Daddy Date with Bella I knew it should be the easiest, because she would be excited to spend time doing anything.  As time goes on though, I assume it will get harder as I run out of ideas.

We started by going to Walmart, just so we could get some cool treats for the morning.  She got Zebra cakes, it was so funny watching her change her mind as quickly as we could pick things up.   She wanted to 'skip' the whole way from our car to the entrance, so manliness be darned, we both skipped all the way into and thru some of Walmart.

My dad gave the kids some kites for Christmas, and so I brought her scooter and the kites with us to Mill Creek Park, and since it was a windy day....AND COLD....it was fun.  The kite is one of those Air Foils, so it pulls pretty hard.  She almost let it go a few times.  We didn't get very far with the scooter, because like I said IT WAS FREEZING!  One hilarious things she did was when she saw me taking her picture on the scooter, she insisted on posing with it kneeling beside it.  The is so Bella.

 
Bella had a birthday party to go to last Saturday and it was at the Clubhouse in Statesboro, a bowling alley with games and lots of stuff.  Each kid was given a game card to play arcades and she had $3.25 left on the card.  So that is where we went first, and I let her play a few arcades and then we played Ski Ball so long (letting her win) that the game actually timed out and declared a winner before either of us went to 7!

Then we went to the college campus.  This was the most fun to me.  We went over to where the lake is near the library.  When we got there we noticed the ducks were definitely expecting us to have something to feed them.  So Bella broke off pieces of twigs and threw them to them, I told her it wasn't fair and she apologized to the ducks.  I downloaded an app on my phone that has duck and geese calls, decided to try it.  We had white ducks in front of us first, the duck calls were of Mallards, and as soon as I played it, they came swimming over.  Then lost interest quickly and paddled away.  I tried the goose one, and that was cool, there was one goose, and he was walking over to us, honking at us, and if I stopped the call, he would slowly walk away, and if I started it up, he would come back, staring at us looking VERY confused and trying to call out to this hidden goose.  Bella and I had fun just sitting and talking, and she has my random brain, so she grabbed some acorns, and told me, 'you have to hold them over your heart and say the predge of leegees'  or "pledge of allegiance'.  So we held these acorns over our hearts and recited it three times.  That was fun.  Then we played follow the leader over the brickways on campus and skipped back to the truck.

A very good first Daddy Date.

NEWBIE!!!

I am new to the blogosphere, and my wife is helping me with it, but I am writing this blog mostly for my kids.


God has granted me so much grace is my life, not the least of which is my amazing family.  I have made a resolution that is one of the most important ones I'll ever make.  Each Saturday morning from here until my kids move out, I am devoting every Saturday morning to one of them.  They will alternate, each Saturday will be a different child.  My daughter, (Bella, 4) loves the term 'Daddy Date', but my son (James, 7) likes 'Bro Time'.  So each Saturday I am going to post minute by minute accounts of each time spent, with pictures, so that years from now this will be an awesome way for my kids to look back in the past and remember the fun we had, and to remind them of just how special they are to me.


God is amazing, and I can't waste a single minute.