Your most enduring accomplishment is the trusting and loving relationships you have with your spouse and your children. What you do each day at home matters. Even the simplest acts of love, kindness and respect have the power to affirm everyone in your home and set the tone. Every day, even if you don’t feel like you’ve accomplished anything, you and your spouse are creating a family culture and legacy that builds up a child’s heart, mind, and soul. Moreover, if you did not come from a life-giving family culture or if you come from one with many challenges, you have the responsibility to get the help you need to heal and create a healthy home environment for yourself and your family.

Here are a couple areas to consider as you seek to create a Life-Giving Family Legacy:

  1. Get Busy Healing – It starts today with you! You and your spouse must get to the root of any past issues that you are carrying forward into your marriage and parenting.
  • Seek God’s help to heal. He is the one who knows all the burdens we carry and can fully redeem our story. To get started we highly recommend going though “Legacy Changer” by Kristen Hallinan.  We suggest that you do this as a couple in the way you might do a Bible study together.  It will help you to understand the science behind your struggle (or a loved one or friend), giving you steps to build more empathy and bring emotional healing to each of you. It’s so important because your hurt also hurts the ones you love whether you do it intentionally or not.
  • Seek Christian or Pastoral Counseling individually or as a couple. If there is past trauma, abuse, moral injury or neglect that is keeping you stuck in unhealthy cycles of thought and behavior, that usually means digging deeper is necessary. Despite our best efforts and intentions, sometimes we cannot break through the bonds of anger, addiction, anxiety, depression and the list goes on. There is no shame in seeking guidance, only a path toward healing.  In some cases, this can be the greatest gift you give your family.
  1. Get Busy Creating – It’s never too late to create the life and legacy you’ve dreamed of or hoped for.
  • Get equipped with marriage and parenting tools you may be missing. Through OneFamily, we offer many different classes and programs that couples can do online together. The best way to get unstuck or begin is to start playing with a new or updated playbook. That’s what we did. Having seen the blessed fruit of a healthy marriage and life-giving home environment in other families around us, we made it our mission to find out what they were doing.  When we took our first parenting class our kids were 5 and 3 years old. It changed the trajectory of our family and our marriage; it brought light and healing into places in our lives we didn’t even know we needed. We then applied the practical tools and relational skills to create the family, the marriage we longed for.  We gradually became the family we desired.
  • Surround yourself with a Life-Giving Community as Lis and Dave mentioned in last week’s letter.If you want a happy, resilient, healthy marriage and family hang around those who have it or are growing towards it. Join or form a small group, get mentors and be around those who will hold you accountable if needed. Studies show that you emulate the 5 people you hang around most. You begin to think and live the way they do for better or worse.  This may cause you to evaluate friendships, influences (digital media consumption, activities, etc.) and family relationships that don’t align with what’s best for you and your family.  This can be very difficult, but it’s one of the most powerful steps toward living a more hopeful, healthy, and beautiful legacy.

Creating a living life-giving family legacy is meaningful work that will affect generations.  It takes time and consistent effort.  Why not choose to consider your family legacy and take those steps to move forward today!

Blessing to you, your family and your legacy,

Shelly and Rich

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New Online Toddlerhood (18mo thru 4yrs) Parenting Class
Starting March 5th, 8-9pm MT

Spanish Simulcast Available!

https://events.humanitix.com/toddler-march2024

This class provides practical and relevant concepts that parents can apply right away – structure/routine, toddler conflict, giving proper instruction, encouragement, and correction.

Understanding the Toddlerhood Transition and having an intentional parenting strategy can put you on the right path in your parenting journey!

The complete 9 week course in only 5 online Zoom classes!

Description 5 – Tuesdays, 7-8pm PT, 8-9pm MT, 9-10pm CT

We welcome parents from all over the country… and world to join us online!