The usually-dry creek bed behind my house is full and overflowing well out of its bounds as I tap these words into this post! Late morning, yesterday, the clouds opened up and dumped out sheets of rain. I don’t even know an official amount, but over four inches. It was a beautiful rain, except for the recently planted corn fields. There’s always some obstacle and hard spot when it comes to farming and weather. You would think we’d be accustomed to it, but I suppose the part of us which hopes and dreams is forever optimistic for things to fall perfectly in place! 🙂 Such a heavy rain all at once, means terraces washing, and standing water in the fields, creating spots where seed washes away or drowns out all together. We’ll count our blessings all the same and remember that last year this time, we were so badly wishing for rain.
I didn’t really pop in today to discuss weather and farming hardships. I actually have two booksets to share with you. I received both sets to review and they are all wonderful books and pair together beautifully. As in, each set is neat together if you have sons and daughters, AS WELL as the two sets, all four books, would be pretty cool together.
The first set is these From Me to You journals. They’re by Mark & Susan Merrill and they’re created to foster communication and relationship with your children and also compile a keepsake while you’re at it! Pretty neat, huh?! I think so, anyway! 🙂
For sons………..in a bright green!
For your daughters.……in shiny purple!
Here’s a peek inside the journals at the layout and a few of the questions. There’s an area for we as parents to answer and reply to the question or write a not of encouragement to your child. Then there’s a page for the child. They can journal, draw, sketch, paste in a picture……..really whatever style works and it’s wide open for any and all creative ideas!
The authors suggest several ideas for answering the questions and they throw out this one:
If your child doesn’t like to write, create a list or checkbox of choices and let them choose. Fill-in-the-blank is another option and have fun making up crazy multiple choice answers! You really could have a lot of fun with these journals!
You don’t have to go through the journals in order either. Take turns choosing a page, skip around, skip pages altogether, do several pages!!!! It’s your journal, so have crazy fun!
The journals for your son and for your daughter have the exact same questions in them. One is formatted and colored for girls and one for boys, but the questions are the same.
If you’ve been seeking a way to stimulate conversations and build relationship with your kiddos, these books are a fun idea! Especially as you don’t have to be a writer. If you love to write or your child does, that’s terrific, but there really is a world of possibility for these. You could even use the questions as a conversation starter and simply discuss your answers and ideas! Or if you have multiple sons or daughters, do a group discussion and take turns jotting bullet points you’d like to remember in the journal.
Let me know if you try these and how you use them! I’d love to hear!
This second set were sent to me from Revell.
Powerful Prayers for Your Son and Powerful Prayers for Your Daughter by Rob & Joanna Teigen. Aren’t these books beautiful?
I love books that encourage us to pray for different areas of our life and for the people in our lives.
I was excited about these and settling in to praying focused prayers over my own daughter and son.
This book contains 88 beautiful prayers written out for you to pray directly if you’d like. Pray these prayers, adding and amending where you want. This book offers focus for different areas and struggles your daughter may face or be going through. Each prayer has one to four Bible verses listed above it. The format of the book also contains Prayer stories. These Prayer stories share incidents and real life happenings from people’s lives and the way they saw prayers answered for their daughter. They are encouraging and inspiring! The book also highlights a few sections reflecting on specific parts of your daughter’s life.
For example: Her Blessings, Her Identity, Her Idols, Her Gifts and Talents.
I really like this book. The prayers are only a page or two and can easily be picked up and prayed anytime.
Praying our own words and our own heartfelt prayers is a beautiful gift, but sometimes in life, it’s so helpful to have a tool like this to pick up and direct us or get us started.
I like these books too, because I often journal prayers and write out prayers myself. So, reading these written prayers resonates with me.
The format of Powerful Prayers for Your Son is very similar to Powerful Prayers for Your Daughter, but the prayers are different and are titled differently. It has 77 prayers versus 88 in the daughter book. It includes the Prayer Stories and the sections highlighting areas in his life.
One of these sections is called His Relationship with God and I love this excerpt from it, “We can use the little moments from our every day to show them that our relationship with God is not just a thirty-minute quiet time in the morning or saying grace before supper. It’s experiencing the presence and power of God in the everyday moments of life with our children.”
The prayers cover so many topics from “When He Feels Inferior” to ” When He Needs To Tell the Truth” to “When He’s Grieving” to “When He Hears False Teaching” to “When He’s Bored” to “When His Life is Changing.”
I like the prayers in both books, because they also point back to us as parents and parts of them are prayers for us too, as we teach and love and encourage our children.
A little peek inside……………
And inside the son book………………..
If you’ve been feeling like you want to focus on specific prayers for your children, give these a try! Especially if you’re walking through a particularly difficult season for whatever reason. Sickness, disease, sudden loss, death, financial pressure, unexpected changes……….any of these and a number of other things can leave us overwhelmed. Sometimes it’s such a blessing to have the words already in place for us.
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