A Living Room Picnic for the cold winter days speaks of celebration!
Love One Another!
Happy Valentine’s Day, wonderful friends!
I hope that today is a day when you know deeply that you are loved, because you are precious to your Heavenly Father.
I love that we have a day in the year when we can be especially encouraged to give words of love, kisses and hugs, acts of service and delight in an overall celebration of loving others well. It is a day that we can use as an anchor that reminds us that everyone in our lives needs to know that they are loved.
Loving by showing it does not have to be expensive or elaborate. It just needs to be expressed. It is a day that helps us practice acting out our love in tangible ways.
Whatever you want your children to cherish and tuck deeply into their hearts must be something that is an intentional part of their lives every day, every season. Loving one another, as adults find out in marriage quickly enough, is a choice, not a feeling. Honor given to another comes from an attitude of humility and respect that is trained into a young child and practiced over many years. So, those who cultivate love and respect find it blooming more often than those who leave it unattended, or expect it to blossom all by itself.
Consequently, if you want to have children who know what it means to exhibit generous, unconditional love, you must help them practice loving every day, but especially on Valentine’s day!. When my children were young, at regular intervals, I would give them practical ways that we would practice love and giving encouragement to others.
First, we had studied our 24 Family Ways and memorized them and learned the verses—you can find the book by clicking the link below!
"We treat one another with kindness, gentleness and respect," was one of the ways that our children heard and wrote over and over again, so that this principle became a pathway in their brain.
Then, I would create ways, over the years, to help them practice taking the initiative to extend their words and actions of love towards others they cherished. One of these ideas would be a perfect project for Valentine’s Day!
One lonely year, when we felt we had no friends because of moving to a new town, we made a list of people that were special to our family, some we had just met or seen at church and a community group we had attended a couple of times. Together, we spent a whole day baking--cookies, bread, cinnamon rolls. While we waited for them to bake, I provided doilies, markers, paper, ribbon, and glue and we spent the day crafting "I love you, I am so thankful you are my friend," and "I appreciate you and thank God for you," cards. Each child chose one of the people to present his or her card to. And of course, you could do this for ten, or three, or even just one special person!
Finally, we all gathered our plates of goodies, ribboned and carded, placed them gingerly in the car, and we were off. It took us 4 hours to deliver them to all the homes of those we had chosen to give our words of love to, and it delighted and filled all of my precious ones with memories of how much a tiny thoughtful gift can mean to someone who needs to hear the words, "I love you."
That night, I made a picnic in our living room to celebrate the day. (After all the dirty dishes and pans fun cookies made, I did not want to have one more dish to clean!) We lit candles all over the room, bought some chocolates, made a special board of picnic fare and ate in front to the fireplace. It was a favorite memory of all.
Other times we made homemade bread, a meal for someone in need of practical help who had been ill, a tea time for a friend who had just lost her mother, a feast of cookies and a “king of the mountain” game with favorite friends. More than anything, shaping my children’s hearts around the idea that love is practical and it is something we give to others from the storehouse of our own abundance became a way of thinking.
These kinds of patterns practiced are a part of who my children perceive themselves to be now as adults--lovers of others. The habit of being thoughtful was a learned value, as we practiced it regularly. The fruit of that kind of seed planting is a soul that emanates love, from being planted intentionally, cultivating and watering those seeds with deeds of kindness, led by a mother who gave her time.
