Spiritual Routines Keep You Focused Through the Seasons of Life

"These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up."

- Deuteronomy 6:6-7

**This is a parenting article I was invited to write for the Forward in Christ magazine's Parent Conversation section to answer the question: How can our family grow together in faith over the summer?**

If your family is anything like ours, you realize that parenting is anything but stagnant. As soon as we feel we’ve mastered a certain season of parenting, something changes. In our family, we discovered that written plans and routines help to keep us focused and provide consistency during these times of change.

For example, my husband, Derek, has been doing a bedtime routine with our kids for several years. He starts by reading an apologetics book, followed by watching two songs on YouTube. He does it at the same time and in the same location every night, so our kids expect it. Now even when he is gone, they still start their bedtime routine without him.

Summer is one of these times of change. It’s easy to get distracted by all the activities and lose our spiritual focus. Our kids go to summer camps. We go on several family trips. We’re doing more outdoor activities.

A few years ago, we wanted to find a way to be more consistent with our spiritual routines, even with these seasonal changes, so we came up with a written spiritual growth plan to help keep us focused. In our plan, we wrote down some simple daily, weekly, and travel routines to keep our family focused on Jesus, no matter what our schedule looks like.

Here are a few examples:

• In our daily schedule, we have made family dinners a high priority, so we also include family worship at our dinner time. We keep it simple: We read a devotion or a section from the Bible, sing a hymn together, and then pray.
• In our weekly schedule, we conduct a more in-depth family Bible study once a week in our home. We read the Bible a few verses at a time, answering questions and discussing the reading.
• When we travel on vacation, we follow a short routine each morning to start our day focused on God. We watch a short video devotion, sing a Christian song, and then pray together.

Writing down a plan with routines that we can do together has helped keep our family focused on God during the summer and other times of change in our family life.

You can read the article online at the Forward in Christ website here.