Tuesday, July 24, 2007

"Family Time"

I would like to draw attention to a blog a woman wrote about family time:

it can be found here

family

I have been wondering a lot about this lately. I have been wondering mostly why the sanctity of “Family Time” has escaped us in the day of being busy and glued to work, activities, etc…. I know as a child, a lot of my friends had one day a week that was ‘Family Time’ growing up. They could not have friends over or go to friends, it was a sacred day in their family that was only for them. Not even extended family, just the immediate family- parents & children. It’s such a beautiful thing. We have been trying to institute that, with mediocre success. We try for Sunday to be our ‘Family Day’ but it sometimes doesn’t work because that’s the only day sometimes to see other people, or we are committed to other things, etc…. Life obviously can get in the way. It would be easier to pick a week night, but we are way too busy throughout the week. It’s like ‘Date Night’ except kids are involved, too. Then we push it back and try to have it on a different day. Here is the problem, most families are guilty (ours included) of not putting enough emphasis on the importance of this, and so it can go on and on before we actually have this special night. When friends ask me to help them watch their kids, or do a certain thing on a night dedicated to ‘Family Night’ it’s easier to just say ‘sure,’ then to say we are having family night, and your children are not invited to join us. It sounds kind of harsh. But in reality, it probably needs to be. I guess in order for the role of the family to be preserved in our culture, we need to get a kind of a more harsh perspective, in some ways, that really puts ‘family’ into a bubble, and refuse to let others tell us we’re crazy for it. I think the lack of this contributes to the divorce rate, and broken families, and people living far away from families and not having that support (we, for the record, are part of this living far away from family statistic, with all of mine in manitoba, canada and ben's all over the US). I guess, my real question and confusion stems from why is it so hard to just say to people “sorry, that’s family night! And nothing or no one can come in the way of this, that’s just how it is.” We do that for work, we do that for many other things, but not our families, or at least not as much as we should. I know we are guilty of this a lot, and I’m sure most families are. Even knowing this, it is still hard to change it because it seems like our culture just doesn’t place a lot of emphasis on family for the most part, and so it makes it hard to do this.

What do you do to make family a priority over everything else? To make sure a date with your family doesn’t change just because it’s more convenient than saying ‘no’ to someone else?? I’d love to hear some ideas….


This is my initial response to this post:

It's not just "family time"...i think about how much men of the household aren't leading their families spiritually at all. Their WIVES are the ones initiating "Bible time" while the men, if the wives are lucky, will go along with it or, if the wives aren't, the man will make up some excuse as to why not.

Even men in the ministry, they care more about the spiritual lives of those they're teaching, and they completely neglect the spiritual needs of the immediate family the Lord has put under their care. It's sickening...

God has placed the man to be the spiritual head of the household, not the woman...so if the woman out of necessity becomes that leader because the man is being lazy in that duty, it's not going to be very successful because it's out of God's ordained order.

It seems that Christian men of the household over the decades have become more interested in the computer, tv, their work, even pornography, than they are in spending time with and leading their families spiritually. This pathetic apathy upsets me as a woman so much.

My consolation (if u can call it that) is that these very same Christian men are going to have to stand before God after they die and be held responsible for those duties they were placed in a position to do, but they failed to do.

The spiritual state of a man's family is more important than work, any entertainment...and even a church flock...if his family is flopping around spiritually like fish out of water, it is the man's responsibility to pull the reigns and be that spiritual leader his family needs and to place this as a priority ABOVE ALL ELSE regardless of how important the other things in his life may seem.

2 comments:

Matt said...

Hi Danae,

I've been browsing your blog ever since you dropped in on the conversation that happened over at mine. Just out of curiosity - how did you come across my blog?

You guys are doing excellent work here. I visited your other blog, and your ETM site - really good material to interact with! (I'm honoured that you put up material from my own conversation, and thank you for the kind words you commented on my blog). God bless you in this work.

Larissa said...

thank you for the comments to my blog! i get a lot of what you're saying. that is definitely true in a lot of homes, by no means is that the norm for most christian families that i know, though. it is very sad, though, when the woman has to pick up and be in charge spiritually of her household because of either a lack of interest from the husband, or no husband at all, definitely not how God intended it to be!!
nice to meet you in the blog world!! :)