Every other week the Howards, Shelly and Rich, and the Marrs, Lis and Dave, trade off writing a OneFamily Letter with the intent to nudge, influence, educate, support and, in small part, come alongside women and men who are hard at work in the job of life. On the whole, life can be…well, complicated. They don’t teach parenting, marriage, or being an adult in school. It is true that a small misconception of how “things [...]
Sometimes we can feel like we are winging it as parents. The demands and pressure of life can get so overwhelming that we can get sidetracked from those meaningful things our hearts desire - like being a good intentional parent. In desperation, when we often look for the one thing or a quick online resource to help us to put a “Band-Aid” on whatever issue of the day we’re dealing with in the moment. All [...]
You are teaching your children how to be – to act, to speak, to think. For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he. - Proverbs 23:7 As a Man Thinketh - James Allen Let no corrupt communication proceed from your mouth but that which is edifying and ministers grace to the hearer. - Ephesians 4:29 We are programmable biologically to where the brain gets wired differently when we are bathed in [...]
Transforming and impacting families is at the heart of our mission with OneFamily! It’s about building an encouraging home environment where children and marriages are flourishing with everyone feeling emotionally and spiritually fulfilled in each other’s company. It becomes a legacy of love that can affect families for generations. This means equipping families with practical resources, encouraging them through the challenging days to persevere, and sustaining them in their marriage and parenting journey. https://youtu.be/hOae1j-CfDA [...]
Is your family characterized by having an attitude of gratitude? When creating family identity do you cultivate and teach gratitude? Among the many reasons we love the Holiday Season, Thanksgiving to Christmas, is that it provided us a wonderful opportunity to build our family identity through family traditions that encouraged Trevor and Alex’s hearts towards internalizing the virtue of gratitude. Family Identity Through Family Traditions Family identity is an anchor for you and your children. [...]
As much as we enjoyed Halloween, we were always glad when it was behind us. Sure, we enjoyed many aspects of trick or treating like the time a 4 year old Elvis impersonator came to the door and said, “Thank you. Thank you very much” in his deepest little voice. But, with all the fun and excitement, there is also a certain kind of craziness that is driven by the childhood narcotic – Candy. It’s [...]
“Ok, bud. Get on the chair and we’ll play a game that will show you something that is really, really important to Mommy and Daddy. It’s called Trust. Climb up there and I’ll show you.” Each of our 3 kids went through this exercise at around 4 or 5 years old. The barstool stands 3 feet off the ground, so the height is very intimidating. “Ok, put your hands by your sides and close your [...]
When our boys were younger, we overloaded and overwhelmed our lives by trying to take advantage of every opportunity life presented – School activities, Sports, Etc. We naively thought balance and getting less busy in our lives would somehow occur on its own; thinking we had plenty of time and life would get less overwhelming in the near future. Fortunately, we discovered that life’s balance doesn’t just happen on its own. So, we came up [...]
In the first segment of Dodging Tragedy – Thoughts on How to Avoid Self Harm, we discussed factors that played a role in our son feeling isolated and depressed. However, the deeper contributing factor were well entrenched feelings of shame that ultimately manifested in the question of ‘to be or not to be’. Time alone for a person that has yet to develop self-control or gain understanding on the ways of being human can be [...]
Life is busy. With school, kids sports and activities, our daily life can easily be characterized by being hectic and overwhelming. Picking up Chic-fil-a on the way from practice can easily become the norm, rather than the exception, for getting everyone in the family fed. However, we discovered that Family Mealtime can actually make a significant impact on your family. Current research shows that having a shared Family Mealtime has huge benefits for marriages and [...]