Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 309

15 Happy Ways to Teach Kids to be Grateful

How long do I really have to figure it out?

How long do I have to figure out how to live full of joy?

So my husband might find himself married to a woman he loves being with.

A woman who knows how to laugh at the days to come?

So our children have these memories of a mama who smiles easy, listens long, makes jokes and praise and all these good days out of crazy messes.

So the Christ in me, Joy Himself, "the gigantic secret of the Christians," is apparent to the world around me, Joy to the world, rescuing the world.

How long do I really have? 

On Saturday, I dig out the manual for my watch.

I read the fine print, a couple dozen times because I'm technical Neanderthal, and I finally stumble into how to reset the timer. I still don't know how long I have.

All the minutes, they will have enough troubles of their own, but the days with this man, these kids, have enough joy, these days have more than enough Jesus – if I can see.

Perspective can always adopt gratitude — and gratitude always parents joy.

We work on seeing together.

Each day when they come to the table for lunch, Shalom passes around the the pad of sticky notes shaped like tulips blooming.

Levi writes down: "I am thankful for my Dad. For rain today making the wheat grow. For hot soup and good bread."

Hope sticks her sticky note 'flower' to the window too. Everyday we count blessings, grow blooms, right there on window panes, right there in places inside of us that let us see everything more clearly.

It's not strange what is happening to us:

"Participants who kept gratitude lists were more likely to have made progress toward important personal goals (academic, interpersonal and health-based) over a two-month period compared to subjects in the other experimental conditions."

A friend tells me her high school students too are filling a whole window with sticky notes of thanks — and the results? Her sophomore English students "have better attitudes and more energy."

Together, we write out daily 7 Gifts. Malakai starts his own 1000 Gifts in handwriting big and sure, graphite pressing into the paper.We write thank you notes, a basket of empty cards at the end of the table, waiting for us to express gratitude.

Steven Toepfer of Kent State University, Salem, had students in six courses write letters of gratitude to people who had positively influenced their lives. Over a six-week period, the students wrote one letter every two weeks. After each letter, the students completed a survey to gauge their moods, satisfaction with life and feelings of gratitude and happiness.

The result, Toepfer said, was dramatic:

"The more thank-you letters they wrote, the better they felt."

Hope licks stamps. Shalom runs out to the red mailbox. I stand at the window, seeing straight through: When we give thanks, we gain joy. All of us.

Because what will the math really matter if they are bitter?

If the house is immaculate — but my attitude a mess?

If they can count — but they don't know how to count all things as joy?

If we get the lists done, but have lost happiness in Him?

How can any grammar skill outweigh the fact they don't know the language of grace and thanks? What good will it be if they can recite all the major British battles — but they don't know to see beauty? What am I teaching our children if I'm not living simply, quietly this:

"Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things" (Phil. 4:8).

Focusing on what is beautiful, good, true –isn't this the truest education?

We work on seeing lessons, me the most in need of remedial help…

6 Reasons Why to Teach Kids to Be Grateful 

The research can only support Scriptural Truth:

1. Better Attitudes:

Children who practice grateful thinking have more positive attitudes toward school and their families (Froh, Sefick, Emmons, 2008).

2. Better Achieve Personal Goals:

Participants who kept gratitude lists were more likely to have made progress toward important personal goals (academic, interpersonal and health-based) over a two-month period compared to subjects in the other experimental conditions.

3. Closer Relationships, Greater Happiness:

Professor Froh infused middle–school classes with a small dose of gratitude—and found that it made students feel more connected to their friends, family, and their school:

"By the follow–up three weeks later, students who had been instructed to count their blessings showed more gratitude toward people who had helped them, which led to more gratitude in general. Expressing gratitude was not only associated with appreciating close relationships; it was also related to feeling better about life and school. Indeed, compared with students in the hassles and control groups, students who counted blessings reported greater satisfaction with school both immediately after the two–week exercise and at the three–week follow–up."

4. Better Grades:

Gratitude in children: 6-7th graders who kept a gratitude journal for only three weeks, had an increased grade point average over the course of a year.

5. Greater Energy, Attentiveness, Enthusiasm:

A daily gratitude intervention (self-guided exercises) with young adults resulted in higher reported levels of the positive states of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, attentiveness and energy compared to a focus on hassles or a downward social comparison (ways in which participants thought they were better off than others).

6. Greater Sensitivity:

Children who kept gratitude journals were more sensitive to situations where they themselves can be helpful, altruistic, generous, compassionate, and less destructive, more positive social behaviors, and less destructive, negative social behaviors…

"Gratitude is good for the giver, and good for the receiver," Professor Emmons said. "This has been documented in friendships, romantic partners and spouses. One study showed that the mere expression of thanks more than doubled the likelihood that helpers would provide assistance again."

And if We Don't Practice Gratitude?

On the other hand, research shows that youth who are ungrateful are "less satisfied with their lives and are more apt to be aggressive and engage in risk-taking behaviors, such as early or frequent promiscuous activities, substance use, poor eating habits, physical inactivity, and poor academic performance."

Research from: Thanks!: How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier

 

Why does gratitude do all of this — how can it, really? Because we were made to live in gratitude to God, giving glory to God.

We were made to live in a posture of grateful worship, and when we live in praise, we live our purpose, and all the pieces fall in place, us all falling down in thanks.

A child who is apathetic, the dark hopelessness of this world threatening to consume?

We hand our children a torch when we hand them a pen, a JoyDare to hunt for Him. Sparks fall and the world catches and they see light everywhere, God-glory igniting everything. Hand them a pen. Hand them a pen. The way to counter apathy is to count the ways of God….

A child who is afraid? Count blessing so Who can be counted on…

A child who is angry? Anger is always just this: the bleeding of a deep wound. Wrap up wounds intentionally with the gentle bandage of God's unending love, His daily, tender graces.

A child who needs to learn pray? "The only real prayers are the ones mouthed with thankful lips. Prayer, to be prayer, to have any power to change anything, must first speak thanks: "in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God" (Philippians 4:6 NIV, emphasis added)." ~One Thousand Gifts

So we try this:

15 Happy Ways to Grateful, Joyfilled Kids

1. Write sticky note on the mirror: What are you grateful  for right now?

2. Make Space for Thanks: As a family fill a whole window or wall with sticky notes of thanks to Him. Hang a craft paper banner at the back door and invite the whole family to fill it in a month with their gratitude, just grabbing the pen and writing down one or two gifts every time they come in or out the door.

Paint a verse or a Grateful Tree right on a wall and encourage kids and visitors to write their thanks right on the wall, or in painted leaves, a visual testimony of your thankfulness to all who come or go. Be intentional about taking Joy!

3.  Leave out a basket of thank-you notes, an invitation to always give thanks to someone

4. Have everyone make their own gratitude journal {click here for free printables for your own gratitude journal}

6. Sing the "Count Your Blessings, name them one-by-one" around the table after one meal every day — and after the chorus, call out the name of a family member, who then gives thanks for a blessing or two… then sing the refrain and call out someone else's name.

7. Leave a Family Gratitude Journal permanently open on the counter: Encourage the whole family to write out a few more of the 1000 Gifts in your 1000 gifts Gratitude Journal

8. Tuck a copy of of the one-sheet free download booklet 7 Gifts: Good and Perfect into a lunchbox or a coat pocket for kids to fill out at school and keep their focus on what's pure and lovely. Share their finds every night at dinner? Somehow, in your own unique way: Establish a daily ritual of sharing thanksgivings!

9. Take the Daily Joy Dare: Print out each month's Joy Dare  and put it on the fridge. In the morning, share that day's dare of 3 gifts to look for and dare the kids to go on a God Hunt that day and keep their eyes open to find those three gifts. Make it part of your evening routine to share where you found those 3 gifts that day.

10. No Complaining Day: Dare to go all day (week? month) with no complaining. Slip a rubber band, bracelet, on your wrist (or use your watch) and every time you complain, move it to the other wrist. Dare everyone in the whole family to go the whole day without moving your wrist reminder. Celebrate with a special treat when the whole family can go the whole day with no complaining!

11. Play the "What's Good & Lovely" High-Way Game: Make it the game you play in the car. One person calls out a person's name, anything seen out the window, anything at all: and each person has to take the High Way and think of one 'good & lovely" thing about what was called. (Ideas of what to call out: Bill! Our country! Our family! Your body! Mondays! Sisters! Moms!)

13. Make Great-Full Jars for each member of your family: Your Go-to Pick-Me-Up:

Easy for children to make — Great-full jars: grab a pretty jar, box, container and some lovely paper. Cut the paper into slips. Write down things you are grateful about the recipient. Example: 5 funny memories with Dad. 4 Things I love about Mom. 7 Reasons Why I love having you as my sister. Write down each memory, reason, gift, on individual slips of paper. Fill the jar with the great notes of memories and joys and love, noting why you are so grateful for that person. Give the jar with a note to the recipient, letting them know that this is the gift that keeps on giving: over and over again they can come to their Great-Full jar and remember why they are loved as a great gift to their family.

14. Make Family Thanksgiving into Thanks-Living: Each Week choose a Family Thanks-Living Project. When we live lifestyle thanksgiving — our very lives become thanks-living. Our lives overflowing with gratitude for the blessings, that we ourselves become the blessing, make our life a gift of joy to someone else.

Every week choose a Family Thanks-Living Project: Volunteer to help a shut-in? Make a meal or a sweet treat for a family? Offer time at local charity? Write it down on the fridge, what the Family Thanks-Living Project is for the week — a way to live out our joy. Because it is even Better to Give the Blessings than Receive the Blessings!

15. Model Gratitude Yourself: More is caught than taught. Intentionally purpose to live wholesale gratitude & personally take the Dare to write 1000 gifts! Have them see you filling in the the free Year of Graces calendar, or using  the free gratitude app, (teens might download it for their own mobiles?), have them catch you taking photos of the little graces, invite them to take pictures too of the small miracles of grace. Let them see your joy!

My watch is ticking quiet today.

I don't know how long I have to live full of His joy.

I know do have right now.

And if perspective can always adopt gratitude and gratitude always parents joy, I pick up a pen and bow the head and pray to be that kind of parent.

The one laughing at all the crazy days to come…

Kids grateful and all the ticking moments great full….

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#3314 – #3325 of my own One Thousand Gifts … of endless grateful love…

More Ideas to Raise Grateful Kids : a helpful video

buds and robins in the orchard in March

cooking with the Farmer in the kitchen… and washing dishes together afterwards

kissing five little nieces on Sunday mornings

a new week! fresh grace!

cleaning out closets!

a long conversation with my Dad

#10 on NYTimes, God urging His children to joy in Him  …

no fear because His perfect love is here

Phil 4:8ing every thought

seeing lessons and all is glass to God

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Today, if you'd like to share your own marking towards 1000 Gifts of thanks, all the ways He daily provides and you give praise — (please, jump in!) — just add the direct URL to your specific 1000 gift list post… and if you join us, we humbly ask that you please help us find each other by sharing the community's graphic within your post.

Click here to download a free Easter Devotional : A Trail to the Tree {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

weekends are for brushing up against light

For unfurling in the quiet,

for basking in bright miracle of here,

for believing He makes all things new.

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Abundant blessings on your weekend, friends! 

:All is grace



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Beauty for the Weekend : On a Saturday morning… take a deep breath at the end of a long week and just go for a slow walk through the gardens here. No hurries. Just slow and see. (scroll through by clicking next at the right hand bottom of the screen)  Beautiful spring, right where you are — the whole earth is full of His glory!

Creative Inspiration for the Weekend :  Ooooh, are you taking happy time everyday to be creative, to encourage wondrous creativity in the kids?  Take a few moments, yourself, with the kids, and check this out. Grab a pencil right now and just really take some marvellous moments to slow down and make…  {Make a memory with the kids and make it a Saturday tradition to just try one of these videos?}

Kitchen Love for the Weekend :   Use this creative, beautiful recipe card generator to organize you favorite family go-to recipes? Loveliness!

Free Printable for the Weekend :   Here's a beautiful one for the fridge – yes, yes, yes!

Kid Fun on the Weekend : The kids can easily whip up some of these No Bake Energy Bites — for a whole day of Saturday goodness! Make up a few to hand out after Sunday service or to a neighbor with this free printable tag?

Clean for the Weekend:  25 Clever Ideas to Make life easier — oooh, I like the linens all in the pillow cases — brilliant!  

Laughter on the Weekend :  Look for one moment that feels like this? Make one moment like this for someone else?  

Sale for the Weekend:    and this cheering note was slipped in my inbox: Family Christian's offering a sweet little sale until  April 5th, 50% off of One Thousand Gifts — yes, half price for the hardcover  (with free shipping over 35$, or just wander into a local store?) Might be a beautiful way of celebrating the joy of Easter this spring with a friend?

{and, yes, ma'am, there's a bevy of free printables to go along with it, to make your own gratitude journal or one for a friend, a bit of happy joy-in-a-box? Thank you for grace.}

Amazon.com WidgetsWorship for the weekend :  God is so good! A enthusiastic flash mob celebrating God with energy and vibrant worship... may all the nations rejoice and sing praise to Him! Dance with thanks this weekend?

Joy in Him, friends! 

 

Click here to download a free Easter Devotional : A Trail to the Tree {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

A Family Christian Activity for Easter ……. Make a Grace Garden {A Visual Parable}

Back there in the beginning, we all fell in a garden.

And Christ, He falls to the ground in the garden of Gethsemane.

And He begins to right our fall.

So the kids and I, we put our hands into dirt,

and we remember our garden fall and His garden grace,

and we make a Grace Garden for Easter.

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How to Make

A Grace Garden for Easter

This is what we did:

We gathered

1. a basket, some dirt,

2. some plants at the nursery, a beginning too,

3. tramped to the woods for just the perfect moss

4. found a wee glass dish for a pond, a few shells too {optional}

5. and  drilleda hole in a stone. {or use a small planting pot or peat pot, laying on its side}

6. We planted a garden, {filled a pond with water}, laid the flattest, the smallest (they were sure) stones from our lane, as a winding path to the tomb and our great freedom coming.

7. We found a stone that read GRACE and put it at the entrance of the Garden Tomb. That seemed perfect.

8. And come Palm Sunday, we'll plant some seeds, resurrection hope in the dark of the earth, and line the little stone path with smalls candles, one for each night of Holy Week, miniature garden torches, for the Light is coming.

And each night, all week we'll light another wick… until Good Friday, when all went dark.

9.And in the evening of Good Friday, the children will shape acaterpillar out of modeling wax, swath it in small square of silk, tuck it in the moss outside the stone over the entrance of the tomb….

10. On Saturday, we'll remember and we'll wait.

11. And come Sunday, Easter morn early, in first light dawning, we'll roll back the tomb, see only the husk of silk left behind, a butterfly a light in the branches of tree over the Tomb.

Tutorial to Make Easter Sunday Morning Butterfly: Click Here

12. And we'll ask it, incredulous at grace all over again, "Why do you seek the living among the dead?" (Lk. 24:5) He is alive!

So this is the path we'll walk the last week of Easter, right across the Grace Garden.

From dark to Light.

From cocoon confinement to conquering in Christ.

From sin grit to saving Grace.

And an Easter Grace Garden will unfold, a parable, a living visual of the metamorphosis of all the cosmos…

And we'll walk with Him again,

in the garden in the cool of the evening,

reunited by grace alone.

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Related Easter Activities:

A Family Sorry Box {a box of repentance} for Lent

A Free Easter Family Devotional with Ornaments to Make Your own Easter Tree

Click here to download a free Easter Devotional : A Trail to the Tree {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

Links for 2012-03-22 [del.icio.us]

A place for Mamas Hearts Online...

... have you slipped over to find a haven at the new Mom Heart site? Sally Clarkson has become a personal mentor and dear friend and it's a joy to gather with her and a whole community of beautiful mamas. I'm looking forward to reading here, writing here, growing in Him here. If your Mama Heart is looking for encouragement, join us, friend?

How to find God in the Messes?

'How do you find God in all your mess?

How do you see Him here?

The Apostle John whispers it clear:

"We [actually] saw his glory… For out of His fullness (abundance) we have all received [all had a share and we were all supplied with] one grace after another

and spiritual blessing upon spiritual blessing

and even favor upon favor

and gift [heaped] upon gift" (John 1:14, 16 AMP).

That's the mystery map to the deep seeing!

We saw His glory … because … we have all received one grace after another. Grace — that is what the full life is full of.

And to see His glory — name the graces.

Retune the impaired senses to sense the Spirit,  to see the grace.

Why is it so hard?

Practice, practice.

The discipline of thanks only comes with practice.

When we practice giving thanks, we practice the presence of God, stay present to His presence, and it is always a practice of the eyes.

 

We don't have to change what we see.

Only the way we see."

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    ~ an excerpt from the photography book, encouragement in the midst of messes:

    Selections from One Thousand Gifts: Finding Joy in What Really Matters

Related Post: Free Printables to Make Your Own Gratitude Journal

Click here to download a free Easter Devotional : A Trail to the Tree {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

Links for 2012-03-21 [del.icio.us]

14 ways to make mediocre art

@ chatting at the sky ... here's a beautiful needful one for the wall.

When You're Feeling Unseen & Unappreciated {Words for Lent}

It's hard to know what that is —

when it's a spotlight

that heats up a prophet's fervor.

 

When ardency kindles with a microphone

and holiness is this blazing performance for audience and applause.

 

But what is that,

that zealous ember in the dark,

when a woman wipes the drool from her father's chin

and carries him down the hall to the toilet,

when a mother lays down bits of her singular life

to wash the bowls and the underwear of the teenager calling her a whore

and a missionary bends in a jungle, a brothel, a slum

and nobody applauds?

 

Are sacrifices the secret, sacred rites

that are gifts

offered with no thought of

return on investment,

given in the dark

when the only light is

His

and your one flaming heart?

 

Who's defining the terms when it's an honor to be awarded

and a sacrifice to be called by God?

 

I do confess to wondering this –

if  the call isn't so much about carrying your Cross across a lit stage

but down the Via Dolorosa

and if the truth of it is

that the word altar comes from the Latin 'altus' meaning high —

because the realest altars burn

where only Heaven sees.

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Every Wednesday, we Walk with Him, posting a spiritual practice that draws us nearer to His heart.To read the entire series of spiritual practices

Next week, as we walk with Him towards Easter, might we consider: The Practice of Sacrifice. We look forward to your thoughts, stories, ideas….

Today, if you'd like to share with community The Practice of Sacrifice … just quietly slip in the direct URL to your exact post….. If you join us, we humbly ask that you please help us find each other by sharing the community's graphic within your post.

Click here to download a free Easter Devotional : A Trail to the Tree {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

Links for 2012-03-20 [del.icio.us]

Have you Met Holley?

@ Bloom Book Club ... I love this woman! Are you joining in with us?
What I Would Do Differently

@Doorposts of Your House ... "If I can't change my own heart (and I can't), I'm certainly not going to succeed in changing my children's hearts.... . . I began to speak less to the kids and more to God."

Why Everybody Needs to Make Art Everyday … {7 Keys to Creativity}

Malakai and his paints sprawl across the table like a bit of the sky run all down.

These thousand colors in rain.

That's the way Malakai paints, dabbing in the underbelly of the darks, lining the greys with white light. He pulls this rainbow of colors back tight and he shoots for stars, right there on canvas.

Even his hands boldly wear it, shades of the sky.

I don't know how he knows it already — to make art out of messy storms.

I've got out the cutting board and have these squash split in half in the kitchen when he dangles off the edge of the sink, washing out a brush.

"I never done this before, but it's working out alright." He grins over at me, spraying water everywhere, his own bow in a stainless sink.

"It doesn't really matter that my clouds don't look like Mr. Ross's — I still like them." He's got blue right under his fingernails and this crazy glint in his eyes.

This must be how all the brave become artists: Quit trying to fit. Why try to squeeze all your extraordinary into ordinary? He's squeezed blue paint everywhere.

"You know how you do it, don't you, Mom?" He's got his feet on the floor now, waving the brush at me, like he's trying to direct an orchestra, me.

"You take a blank canvas and you start brushing across all the colors." He's moving his arms all big, a flying, and I'm smiling. Creating in the face of fear, it's like that, a bit like flying right into freedom.

Malakai flings out his brush.

"Gonna paint another one right now." He's so slight and so bold and and I nod in the kitchen before the halved squash because it is about the making. God made woman to be a maker, to open her empty places and let life be knit from within her.

Creativity, it's good theology; it's what God did in the beginning.

The essence of creativity is essentially risk, believing enough to leap into the yet unseen. The theological terms for this is faith.

Malakai's at the table showing Shalom how to press out a tube of oiled royal blue.

She's got her face right down to the canvas, face right in the wonder of all that color coming out.

"Give me a brush, Kai." She says it with her authoritative voice but she's never even done oil paint before. She doesn't care. She's pushing up her sleeves, all ready to bare a part of her one wild creative mind.

"It's my turn to try." When we stop fearing failure, we start being artists. How does she do that?

It's right there in her eyes, if I read all the light in them: Don't let the sun set till you've done one thing that sort of scares you.

The only trees that ever grow tall keep relentlessly stretching into unknown territory. She's all limbs reaching up. When did I forget how to be a child?

Art, it's the second person present indicative of the verb to be. Art is a way of being and when you make your life art — thou art.

We have to get the paints out more. We have to make more messes.We have to more be. When did I stop forgetting to be?

I tell Shalom to go put a paint apron on first and she leaps unafraid off her chair and heads for her smock and and really, what else can God's children wear but the habit of creativity? Malakai shows her how to paint the sky and the earth and the trees and she makes strokes on her white blankness.

He sticks his tongue out to the side when he concentrates hard.

She keeps dabbing her brush into the brown. They both have their heads bowed over the canvas, bowed like they're burying something.

There is that: Bury your fear in faith. Otherwise you bury your talents.

Shalom, she brushes her brown with more shades.

And there's this rainbow, perfect right there across her dirt.

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1. Quit trying to fit. Why try to squeeze all your extraordinary into ordinary?

2. God made woman to be a maker, to open her empty places and let life be knit from within her.

3. Creativity, it's good theology; it's what God did in the beginning.

4. When we stop fearing failure, we start being artists.

5. Don't let the sun set till you've done one thing that sort of scares you. The only trees that ever grow tall keep relentlessly stretching into unknown territory.

6. Art, it's the second person present indicative of the verb to be. Art is a way of being and when you make your life art — thou art.

7. Bury your fear in faith. Otherwise you bury your talents.

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Related: When You Wonder if What You Create is Ever Good Enough

 

 Click here to download a free Easter Devotional : A Trail to the Tree {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

Links for 2012-03-19 [del.icio.us]

All the Sons and Daughters

@ The Mom Creative..For all of us. Right now. Beautiful!
It’s living that’s the hard part.

@ Prodigal Magazine..."That's when my heart stopped beating." Yes -- this.
when you hit the wall...

@from the unpaved road... "Some days when I hit the wall, I just need to be cupped gentle until I recover."