One of the neat things about starting a family is starting family traditions/practices. I want our family to be rich with traditions – not only holiday traditions but also daily family traditions. Here’s a few of the regular family traditions/practices we have right now.
Something Josh and I started when we were first married is Friday night Date Night. We reserve Friday nights to be together without school work or other distractions (like taking phone calls). Now that we’ve been blessed with Becca we have Family/Date night. When the weather is nice we typically go to a park. Then after Becca goes to bed, Josh and I play games or read together. This past Friday, we visited a park that we found about a year ago. A year makes a huge difference when it comes to playing with your baby at a park!
A practice (we hope it turns into a tradition) that we’ve recently started is lunch, dinner, and bedtime Bible reading. After thinking about all the books we read together in a year (just a chapter at a time) we decided to add chapters of the Bible into the mix. We’re reading one chapter from the Old Testament after we eat lunch and dinner, and we’re reading one chapter from the New Testament before we go to bed. So far, we’re both enjoying this new practice, and it’s been a good way to start teaching Becca to sit and listen to Daddy read the Bible.
After Becca was born, we decided to memorize hymns. We are currently working on Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted. So far we have learned the following hymns: Lord Enthroned in Heavenly Splendor; God Moves in a Mysterious Way; Praise, my Soul, the King of Heaven; O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus; Be Still my Soul; Be Thou My Vision; All Creatures of Our God and King; A Mighty Fortress is Our God; Come Thou Fount; Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence; What is the World to Me?; Praise to the Lord; Come We that Love the Lord; My Jesus Fair; He Who Would Valiant Be; Come Christians Join to Sing; Break Thou the Bread of Life; I Run to Christ; Rejoice, the Lord is King!; and Jesus, Lover of My Soul. Our practice is to sing the hymns we’ve memorized while we drive to church on Sunday mornings. We also sing a couple verses of the hymn we’re working on each night before we eat dinner.
After reading a chapter entitled “Mealtime Prayers with the Pipers” from Piper’s book, Pierced by the Word, Josh decided to write mealtime prayers for our family. This was part of my anniversary gift. We have the morning prayer memorized, and we’re working on the noon and evening prayers.
We end the day (well, Becca’s day) with a bedtime ritual. While Becca drinks her bottle of milk, she sits in my lap while Josh reads a Bible story to her (from The Jesus Storybook Bible or The Big Picture Story Bible). Then we sing “Goodnight, Our God is Watching Over You” (something my parents — especially my dad — would sing to me when I was little), then we pray for Becca and tell her “Daddy loves you, and Mommy loves you, but most of all, Jesus loves you” (another tradition from my parents).