Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family Quotes

“In times past there were rituals of passage that conducted a boy into manhood, where other men passed along the wisdom and responsibilities that needed to be shared. But today we have no rituals. We are not conducted into manhood; we simply find ourselves there. Kent Nerburn, Letters to My Son”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“To live by grace means to acknowledge my whole life story, the light side and the dark. In admitting my shadow side, I learn who I am and what God’s grace means. Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“The abundant life is the beautiful fruit of pursuing Jesus, and it was never intended to be a pursuit in and of itself.”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“deep inside each one of us is the desire to write and control our own script of life.”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“Families, may you be filled with the love and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is at work in and through you. May you understand afresh the role He has graciously entrusted to you in the children who are in your home. As you seek to build a spiritually healthy family, may you be encouraged and strengthened by the power of God’s Spirit to not grow weary and to not give up. Be strong and courageous and give thanks to God in all things. And now to Him who is able to accomplish more than we can think or imagine, to Him be the glory forever and ever. Amen.”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“Yet we don’t have to fall into those failing responses. Instead, we can look to Scripture and the character of God for insights on living. In a conversation with Lee, he shared, “After many of the great movements of God, He asked His people to build a memorial so that they would remember what He had done. God created a system of spiritual ceremonies for His people to celebrate regularly as families to remember what He had done. When Jesus was on His way to the cross, He used the symbols of wine and bread to teach about what was going to happen to Him. Then He invited His followers to ‘do this in remembrance of [Him]’ as a ceremony to help them remember.”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“Confusion about how to communicate with this age group has haunted parents for many years. Mark Twain gave an amusing piece of advice concerning adolescence when he declared his preferred method of interacting with teenagers: “When a boy turns thirteen, put him in a barrel and feed him through the knothole. When he turns sixteen, plug up the hole.” This humorous advice reflects parental frustration about what to do with adolescents who are struggling to transition from childhood to adulthood.”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“I looked back … and realized I had spent 10 years trying to convince kids to behave Christianly without actually teaching them Christianity. And that was a pretty serious conviction. You can say, “Hey kids, be more forgiving because the Bible says so,” or “Hey kids, be more kind because the Bible says so!” But that isn’t Christianity, it’s morality.… We’re drinking a cocktail that’s a mix of the Protestant work ethic, the American dream, and the gospel. And we’ve intertwined them so completely that we can’t tell them apart anymore. Our gospel has become a gospel of following your dreams and being good so God will make all your dreams come true. It’s the Oprah god. Phil Vischer, in an interview with World Magazine”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“The best thing to spend on your child is your time. Louise Hart”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“Jill Carattini said that offering a blessing to another, specifically our children, is a high calling … a mysterious gift given to all made in God’s image. The putting of God’s name upon another soul as we go about life is our tongue’s greatest utterance. It is a hopeful command, a most uplifted effort. As God’s name is set forth, not only is it God who does the blessing, it is God who is the very fulfillment of the words we offer. God is the blessing”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“The single most important concern we should have as parents should be the same primary concern Jesus has for us: We must make it our ultimate goal to help our children know and love God with all their heart. How do we do that? One of the simplest and most powerful ways … is to give them a daily, concrete encounter with His power and favor by laying hands on them and speaking a blessing. Rolf Garborg, The Family Blessing”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“I gave in, and admitted that God was God. C. S. Lewis”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“It’s really not so much about the amount of yeses or nos; it’s about the brokenness behind our answers.”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“What a curious phenomenon it is that you can get men to die for the liberty of the world who will not make the little sacrifice that is needed to free themselves from their own individual bondage. Bruce Barton, It’s a Good Old World”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“One might as well try to ride two horses moving in different directions, as to try to maintain in equal force two opposing or contradictory sets of desires. Robert Collier”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“Children raised by the Spiritually Healthy parent often grow up knowing God, loving others, living a life of meaning, and recognizing that this world is not their ultimate home.”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“Because you realize you are a work in progress yourself, you offer your children grace when needed, while helping them see the correct path that God desires all His children to follow.”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“While far from perfect, the Spiritually Healthy parent is a parent who walks each day, step by step, with God as his or her guide.”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“Children raised by the I-Can’t-Say-No parent often grow up too quickly, suffer from chronic boredom, think that rules don’t apply to them, become poor money managers, are unable to cultivate healthy emotional boundaries with others, and have an unhealthy attachment to you in adulthood.”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“Children raised by the Double-Minded parent will often grow up having codependent tendencies, seeking acceptance from others, being unrealistic in their view of “self,” and feeling insecure. They are confused about what it means to follow Christ, and might avoid their parents in adulthood.”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“A dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it. Mary Karr, The Liar’s Club”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“It’s the pressing on toward the goal that is important, not simply trying to look perfect or be perfect. And it’s also important to forget what is behind us, because we cannot change our pasts. We can, however, look forward and fix our eyes on Jesus as we listen to His direction.”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“Spiritually healthy families come from spiritually healthy individuals who, on their journey together, seek to live “on script” each day.”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“We stop living the life that He planned for us, and we start living out of dysfunction instead.”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“When an actor plays a scene exactly the way a director orders, it isn’t acting. It’s following instructions. James Dean”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“while living on His script. While far from perfect, the Spiritually Healthy parent is a parent who walks each day, step by step, with God as his guide. Becoming a spiritually healthy family means you will allow God to call the shots for you and your family members and that you look to Him to give you wisdom instead of relying on your own strength and “great ideas”. Because you realize you are a work in progress yourself, you offer your children grace when needed, while helping them see the corrected path that God desires all His children to follow. You recite the following things each”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“let’s think about Jesus’s statement. It’s a command against something that many of us feel is involuntary. I mean, I don’t normally think I choose anxiety. I’ve never said to my husband, “Honey, I’m going to take some time to go for a walk and just focus on how I can make myself feel utterly out of control and stressed out. I will fixate on all the things I’m unhappy about or I can’t change in my life, and hopefully when I return, I will be a raving lunatic.” That would be ridiculous. But, if you think about it, Jesus states this as if it is indeed a choice. Do not worry. It’s a command from Jesus”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles

“Maybe becoming a spiritually healthy family is not about becoming a perfect family but rather following a perfect God together. And in doing so, to find peace with Him, our pasts, and our family members.”
― Michelle Anthony, Becoming a Spiritually Healthy Family: Avoiding the 6 Dysfunctional Parenting Styles