Pass on "The Blessing" this Easter

Here's a fun idea for passing on the "blessing" to your child or loved one this Easter.

Put a “Blessing Coin” in their Easter Basket!

It’s always great to fill your child’s Easter Basket with chocolate, or colored hard boiled eggs – but this year, how about adding something that can warm their hearts as well as satisfy their sweet tooth?

Children, of any age, long for their parents' “Blessing.” No matter your age, the approval of your parents affects how you view yourself and your ability to pass that approval along to your children, spouse and friends. If you’ve got a child – or other loved one in your home – The Blessing Coin (about the size of a half dollar) is a great way to give them your “Blessing,” along with something sweet!

On the back of the Blessing Coin are the five elements of the Blessing that each of us needs from those who care about us. Those five things are as old as the Old Testament, and as new as the most current research into what makes a strong family! And when you give your child a coin, make sure that you give them your “Blessing” at the same time. Your “Blessing” gives your child an empowering sense that you love, accept, and value them.

What are those “five” elements of the Blessing? They spell out, B.L.E.S.S. – on the back of your coin…(you can click on the photo to enlarge and see the details)

• Be committed
• Lovingly touch
• Express high value
• See potential
• Say it

Here’s an example of how to “Bless” your child when you give them their coin, putting all five elements of the Blessing into practice at the same time!

First, give your child their Easter Basket and ask them to look for a favorite chocolate (or favorite candy if they’re one of the few kids on the planet that don’t like chocolate!). While they’re munching, ask them to look for something else that’s really valuable that you want to show them, that you’ve put in their basket… their Blessing Coin that you (or you and your spouse) want to give them.

When they find the coin, explain to them why this is such a valuable coin, and what it represents from you. Here’s the kind of thing you can say (modified to fit your child of course).

“Sweetheart (or “Son” or put in their name), as I hold your hand and as I put this coin in your hand, I want you to know how much I love you, and how committed I am to being there for you all my life. I want you to know, right now, that if I could pick any child on the whole planet to love and bless – I’d choose you. I believe you are a gift of God to me, and I know that in the future, God has built so many great things into your life and heart, that you’re going to do great things to help others, and to be a Blessing one day to your own family. So thank you for being an incredible kid, and I want you to keep this coin so that you can always remember that no matter what, you have my “Blessing.”

In that short paragraph, are all five elements of the Blessing! There’s...

• “Be Committed” - words shared that highlight your commitment to love him or her, and to be there for them all of their life
• “Loving Touch” as you hold their hand and give them their coin
  
• “Expressing Value, high value - as you let them know that out of all the kids in the world, you’re grateful God gave them to you
• You've “Seen potential” in them for a great future, and that their strengths and gifts are things God can use in the future to help their own family and others
• and you’ve “Said it!” verbally! It’s so important to verbally “say” a Blessing – not just to assume that your child “knows” you love them! (I’ve had people in the counseling office who are in their seventies and still long and wish that – even once – they would have “heard verbally” their parent’s Blessing on their life!)

Obviously, if your child is a three year old, they may not understand all you’re saying – but give them your “Blessing” anyway. And if they’re five years old or older, they’ll “get it.” And don’t be surprised if that simple coin becomes a special symbol of that time that Mom and/or Dad, “Gave me their Blessing.”

Lord bless you and your family as you pass on the Blessing!

Need more help in understanding how the “Blessing” can be a life-changing and transforming gift for your child or others? (Your child of any age, by the way!) Then visit our website (www.StrongFamilies.com). You’ll find a book called, The Blessing, as well as encouragement to live out “The Blessing” in marriages and families, through your church, and as a key to doing “faith@home”.

You can also visit the online store to find "Bedtime Blessings" Volume 1 and 2 - books that you can tuck into your child's Easter basket and read to them throughout the year. What an awesome way to leave a legacy of love to those that God has entrusted to your care!

And let us know what happens. We'd love to hear your stories about the impact that this small, but meaningful gesture has on your children and loved ones. Keep us "posted".

Have a joyous Easter!

Men, do I hear an Amen!

(Ladies, maybe one day it will be high heels!)

Right now, an AMA (American Medical Association) committee is considering a resolution that supports adopting guidelines for a dress code for doctors that minimizes the spread of infections.

There’s evidence that doctors’ neckties actually can spread disease – meaning there may soon be no “ties” in the hospital or doctor’s office!

Lord, may that kind of thinking “spread” all across the country in the days to come!

Ready When the Gate Opens

A few years ago, I had the chance to go to one of the most gorgeous places on the planet; Kodiak Island, Alaska. From there we flew in a small seaplane to an island called Afognak in order to go salmon fishing on some of the most beautiful rivers in the world. But what I also remember is the “Gate Keepers” I met there.

As we were walking in the wilderness up one river, we suddenly came upon a small house. During the endless summer days and nights in Alaska, the cabin was occupied by a state game and fish employee, (and in this case, with his wife and their three young children as well). The game warden was there to operate the “Salmon Weir.” It’s basically a huge gate that swings shut, or swings open, so that the salmon coming upstream can either continue their journey, or have to stop and wait.

If you’re not familiar with the journey that these salmon take to get to this gate, it’s an amazing picture of God’s miracle of creation. The “gate keeper” told us that these very same huge salmon had once hatched in these beautiful mountain streams. They stay in the shallows until they grow big enough, and then they travel downstream to the bay and finally out into the ocean. After they grow large and fearsome in the rough, cold Arctic waters, God turns on an internal homing signal that points them back to Afognak. “Back” in some cases means beginning a journey of two thousand miles or more in order to end up in the very stream where they were born, and where they now seek to lay their eggs.

The salmon gate provides two services for the fish and the fish mangers. First, it allows the game and fish employee to count the number of salmon heading upstream (an incredible feat with the hundreds of salmon that congregate below the gate when it’s shut). That allows a forecast to be made of the amount of salmon they expect to harvest that year. But the gate also provides a place to rest, for the salmon to breathe and gather strength before continuing their arduous journey upstream.

It was astounding to stand above the gate and look at the thousands of salmon waiting for the gate to open. Milling around. Darting back and forth. Looking like carbon copies of those huge fish you see on the wall at Red Lobster. Only now a huge, living, churning, mob. And then finally, the “gate keeper” opens the gate, and they shoot through and on toward their goal!

Or at least most of them do.

For whatever reason, there are some that when that gate finally opens – simply stay put. They’ve been stopped in their journey and blocked from their goal. Now, when an unseen hand finally opens the gate, it’s like that “open gate” means something for others, but not for them.

Which (I’m sure you’re waiting for this!) is something that’s going on right now in the lives of many people we minister to and counsel with. There are thousands of us right now who are in “transition.” I’ll define a transition as a major movement in our life, often outside our control, that stops us in our tracks, and only sometime later, opens up a new season and way of life for us to go.

For so many people today, they’ve seen their goals and dreams and “pathway” blocked in these tough times. And the longer they sit in a pool through being unemployed or underused or simply forced to “wait” for something out of their control to “open up,” the more difficult it can be to believe that the goals they once had were real, or were ever really achievable. And for too many, when a gate finally does open – all after the waiting and uncertainty – they stay put instead of pressing forward toward what God has next.

My prayer for you – if you’ve had a gate close on your career or “well planned” life-story – is that you’ll stay “anxious” and expectant for the time when the Lord opens the gate for you. Being “expectant” wasn’t easy for the people of the Old Testament to keep waiting for a Messiah to come. It wasn’t easy for King David who was told by God’s Prophet that he would be “King” – and then was chased into the desert and had to flee for his life! It certainly could have seemed to David when Saul hunted him down, that that gate would never open. But that wasn’t his mindset – even in the cave where he wrote,

Psalm. 43:5

"Why are you in despair, O my soul?
And why are you disturbed within me?
Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him,
The help of my countenance and my God."

That whole Psalm is the prayer of someone waiting for a gate to open – but waiting in faith and expectancy of God’s better day.

I know it’s incredibly hard (or at least it’s hard for me) to mill around and wait for the “gate” to open, even if you’re with lots of other “fish” or fishers of men. But God will open the door for the “what’s next” for us, in His time, if we’ll just keep trusting, and exercising our faith, and knowing the day of our “open gate” will come. And when it does, we’re ready to race upstream toward all He has for us.

Is your gate closed right now? Will you be ready when it opens?

Photo credits: #1 ADF & G, #2 Thomas Quinn, # 3 RangerRoy - Flickr

Here's a parenting tip that's on the tip of your tongue!

Things had to change at the “Integrated Arts Academy” at H.O. Wheeler Elementary School in Burlington, VT. Students had been sent out of class 600 times the previous year for misbehavior.

So guess what “changed?” “Teachers and Administrators at the school heaped at least 12,000 compliments in 2009 on students who follow the rules.”

And the result of catching students doing what’s “right” and saying, “That’s great!”

Suspensions dropped by more then half, from 74 days to 21 days, and students were told to leave the classroom 198 times, down from the 600 times a year ago!

And guess what?

If sending your child to “time-out” is getting up in the “600” range, how about pouring on praise for what they do “right” as well!

You know it’s “officially” Winter when people’s tongues are getting stuck to poles!

Are you getting snow in your part of the country? Northern Arizona is getting tons of it this week!

I hope over the Holidays, you were able to watch a Christmas classic, “The Christmas Story.”

If you haven't seen it, it’s the story of a young boy who wants a Red Ryder B-B gun – and his friend who, on a dare sticks his tongue onto a frozen pole on the playground!

This just in. “Boy’s Tongue Freed From Pole!”

In a scene right out of the movie, Boise, Idaho fire officials were able to free a boy whose tongue was stuck to a metal fence pole! “I’ve been doing this 20 years and this is the first "tongue frozen to a pole" call I’ve had.” Boise Fire Captain Bill Tinsley said.

A woman driving by saw the boy with his tongue stuck to the fence and called 911. Once the firefighters poured warm water on the pole, his tongue was released and they let him walk to school.

The only thing you get from sticking your tongue on fence posts here in the Phoenix area is a burned tongue!

We hope you are warm, dry and free to roam as you read this.

Ready for something “real” instead of a New Year’s Resolution?

How about making the decision to make a 2 Degree change in your health, your home and your heart for God – not a “180 Degree” change that you’ll never keep.

Like finding a friend and the two of you committing to doing (and bugging each other to do) ten sit ups and five push ups a night. Or drinking five glasses of water a day. Or having one dessert every other night, instead of every night.

For more ideas on making 2 Degree changes in your home and heart for God, click here to read about "The 2 Degree Difference"!

Two Trees This Christmas

We finally did it! This year, we got our outside lights up the day after Thanksgiving. That sets the record as our family’s earliest time ever to decorate the outside of the house. We did it early so that we could have Laura, who was home from college for Thanksgiving, help with stringing the lights. But as early as we were on the outside lights – we just got our tree up inside yesterday! (We can’t blame that on Laura – just being too busy!). Sure it’s a little late, but it’s up and shining brightly! (See picture).

I’m all for putting up Christmas trees as we get ready to celebrate the birth of Jesus (whether early or late) but I wanted you to see a different kind of tree as well. The other day in the StrongFamilies Sunday School class that my wife and I teach at Scottsdale Bible Church, I asked people to share one of their “Christmas traditions” with us. We heard some great things, but one tradition I’d never heard before and wanted to pass along to you.

Joel and Marcela Waggener have a very different kind of Christmas tree. In fact, it’s so cool – the Trent family decided that starting this year, we’re going to put up “Two Trees.”

Our “normal” tree is covered with lights and with all the Christmas ornaments we’ve collected over the years. Glass ornaments that say things like, “Our first year of Marriage 1979” and “Baby’s First Christmas 1986” and another with “1990.” There are two homemade ornaments that the kids made when they were young and fun ones like the stingray ornament from a vacation to the Cayman Islands years ago. But in addition to this tree, we’re going to get a small second tree as well. Why two trees??

In Joel and Marcela’s house, they have a tree (see picture) that has some very unusual decorations. In fact, on their tree they have a bagel, adoption papers, small maps, miniature construction trucks, a bar of soap, and a door! Here’s why…

Each of these items can be placed on the tree to remind us of our relationship and identity in Christ and to provide an opportunity to share the Good News with those who come into our home. For example, Marcela had a workman at the house the other day and when he saw the tree he said, “What kind of tree is that?” She shared with him about why they put bagels and maps and soap on the tree – and the workman got tears in his eyes! Here’s what she shared with him…

The Bagel - John 6:35 – is a picture of how Jesus is the Bread of Life

A 12” Ruler - 1 John 4:9-10 – is a picture of how God does not measure our performance, because HE was satisfied with Jesus’ dying for us on the Cross.

The American flag - Philippians 3:20 – We love our country, but our most important citizenship is in heaven.

A Bar of soap - 1 John 1:9 - Jesus forgives us and washes away all of our sins.

Some small Maps - John 14:6 - Jesus is the only Way

A Door – Revelation 3:20 – Behold I stand at the door and knock… anyone who opens the door, opens their heart to a relationship with Jesus!

Marcela got the idea from someone sharing at a Women's Bible study several years ago. It's based on a booklet by Darlene Danninger, called the “Jesus and Me Tree”. More information about the book can be found at Darlene’s website here.

Darlene believes the idea has been around for many many years...it was parents and grandparents ways of putting Christ back in Christmas in a very simple and inexpensive way...they used what they had in their home or items they could make out of paper or clay. (Their tree is shown too.)

All that to say, you might want to have “two trees” next Christmas! A great idea to share the “why” of Christmas along with the tradition and joy of Christmas!

Next Blog: Choose The 2 Degree Difference - instead of making a New Years Resolution...

...and GO FROGS! (TCU – where I graduated) is in the Fiesta Bowl January 4^th!.