Can we just have a moment of complete honesty? Being a stepmom is hard. Like really hard. It’s as if I’ve gone zero-to-elementary-school in milliseconds.
But from all that I’ve heard, it’s difficult no matter how you’ve become a parent: marriage, fostering, adoption, traditional pregnancy. Parenthood guarantees two things: you’ll need to pick your battles (sooner rather than later) and you’ll celebrate every parenting win you get!
So while I’ve given up on finding loose socks tucked in the couch (and on the stairs and in the refrigerator…), I’ve always been determined to create a time each day for all four of us to read the Bible together. One huge problem: the girls, who are 7 and 8, had an old and tired kids Bible. The stories were too long, unfriendly to young readers, and all the illustrations were “booorrrrinnnngggg.” (Words spoken by a third grader, but agreed on by her parents.)
I forced family devotions for months! But things all changed when I finally received a copy of the Friends With God Story Bible. The girls were immediately blown away by the illustrations. Our younger daughter would just flip through all the stories, marveling at the pictures and calling out all the people she recognized.
But I was most impressed by the change in our oldest daughter. When we were using our old, “booorrrrinnnngggg” kids Bible, she’d always ask to read something else instead. It was easy to tell she was not connecting well to the stories and didn’t see God working in these people’s lives…or at least how it related to her life. With the Friends With God Story Bible, her attitude about the Bible has changed completely. Now, the first thing she does after school is ask to read a story with me. The same before bed! Then once we pray and tuck her in, she spends another half-hour reading the Bible. Even in the mornings, that’s all she wants to do before it’s time for school. She can’t get enough!
As a parent, I’m most thankful for the character pages at the end of each story that help to show how God worked in the character’s life and how God works in our lives, too. I cherish the time we get to spend as a family talking about how God loves us and wants to be our friend. These are precious memories that are laying a foundation of truth in our girls’ lives in a way that makes pursuing a relationship with God enjoyable! I consider that the parenting win of a lifetime.
Source: My Life Tree
