A vision for our family?

The discussion questions are:

Do you have a family vision?

Why does having a family vision matter?

If you have not considered having a family vision, what are some steps you can take towards it?

OK, I have found some things on the net to help me start.

Before I start typing out this post, I want to mention something I was reminded of last night while watching Deborah 13: Servant of God on Austar. It is a show about a homeschooling family, in particular Deborah, who is such a lovely girl. Her father mentioned the scripture "line upon line, precept upon precept". That was encouraging to me. We watched the show more or less as a family, and we enjoyed it.

A common purpose and plan. Since the woman is the manager of the home, maybe it is my place to do this?

I can't copy out the questions required to make a family vision, but you can find them here at the bottom. Because my family is nearly or at least half grown, some of those things have been in place, though lately I am a little tired and jaded. However, today I was nearly in tears. My daughter won a scholarship, and for a small amount of money she will be going overseas on a scholarship for a week. Sometimes even when things are hard, nice things happen. My husband and daughter did put a lot of work under pressure to put her video together for the submission. My little girl will be travelling overseas. My eldest was able to do this as well. And he graduates from university in a week! Those things when they were babies I am not sure I could have imagined. Especially considering I didn't manage those things myself.

I am very pleased that my children are able to go to Youth group and Spotlight and learn about God. This has been a vision, possibly not very well carried out, but what I am able to get done I am very pleased about. We have been trying to go to whatever activities any community we have lived in has to offer that I thought suitable.

I feel the same about music, though at the moment it is hard to achieve.

So my values are:

• high on some Christian input for the kids
• same about learning piano and possibly another instrument
• manners of some kind (I try), and amazingly if kids don't do it, at least they know if they find it important from the constant reminders that you have issued even if they didn't do them at the time
• I like them learning things like chopping wood or lighting the fire
• I like being multicultural, but I like them to know their own culture first
• I like the highcountry culture
• if the family turned out well, they would be able to nurture a family and continue our society
• I like it when the children are resilient and able to change with circumstances
• I hope they would say we were kind
• I like education for education's sake

Another thing I appreciated today was my little girl's wanting to play board games with us. I am not a games person, but I enjoyed seeing my daughter play Chinese checkers with her Dad before her bedtime tonight. It has reminded me of my Nana's board games. She had Snakes and Ladders, Chinese Checkers and Draughts. I loved her sets. My friend's family played Mah Jong.

Photo ~ Allposters