Parents are busy people! And last on the list of “to do’s” in our lives is often anything that is “for us.” However, it might behoove us to look at some of those things that we “do for us” as not being just “for us” after all. Reading for yourself each day could just be one of those things.
I’ve been a big reader all throughout my parenting years—parenting books, homeschooling magazines and catalogs, devotional materials, and discipleship books are staples that I have pored over through the years. However, a few years ago, I realized that I was seldom picking these things up anymore. I would stack them on my headboard or desk, look at them longingly, remember the days of long naps for the kids and my “lunch and reading time,” but not really get to them.
In the past few years, I have gotten better about going back to my own reading. But in 2011, I want to make it even more of a priority. Not just Bible and character in the morning with the kids, not just reading stories to Jakie, not just a chapter book with my guys, not just a family devotional at the dinner table—but my “Trusting God” by Jerry Bridges and my “Grammar Girl Devotional” and my “Writing Handbook” and my “Raising Kids for True Greatness” and on and on. Just for me…because in the long run, reading for me is not really just reading for me.
Yes, this is one of my goals this year. The more I read online the shorter my attention span for book reading gets (add that to the interruptions etc of life). So my plan this year is to have some reading time in the middle of the day again - join my kids as they are reading at that time.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this series of thoughts - I am enjoying each one, and many of them have lined up with the things that I had previously thought I need to polish up on!