In my post yesterday I talked about the book Sticky Faith. Today I thought I’d share a bit more of a personal experience that goes along with one of the chapters in the book. In chapter 5 “A Sticky Web of Relationships” Kara shares a story about a small covenant group of families from her church that started meeting together when their kids were young and covenanted to raise each others kids and do life together. The way that did that was a weekly parent Bible study and a regular time where they would pull out their calendars and share about major milestone events in their kids lives and all the parents would show up to that event. And every summer they would go on a big vacation together.
Well that group is significant to me because my wife grew up in it. She has great stories of those 5 sets of parents caring for her and really raising her. And I had to endure that group when I began courting my wife and ultimately when I asked her dad and moms hand to marry her. I remember the first time I ever met those families was on our second date and those 5 dads pretty much let me have it and told me that if I did anything to hurt Danielle they were all going to take me to task. When any of the kids got engaged they would throw a big party. When we had babies they would show up to the hospital. When we were contemplating job changes or big life decisions they were always there to talk to.
We want this for our kids. We want to do life with other couples and to share love and caring for each others kids. This is a huge value for us as we now have a 5th, 3rd and kindergartner. It’s our hope that this is starting now and we are praying that God would put us in a community where we can find a group of people to do this with.
Want to impact your kids. Find other couples in the community you are in now and covenant to doing life together and caring for each others kids. It will make a huge difference. It did for us.
I love this story! Like you, I want my kids to grow up with a sticky web of relationships.
Dang, Adam beat me to the comments. I love this story too. We have a weird thing in our family in that Megan & Paul don’t have “best friends” or even other kids that they regularly hang out with outside of school or church. Neither of them seems bothered by this but I sometimes wonder how this is going to translate as they get older. I have lone ranger tendencies but still recognize that I need community…and my kids need community. We had the parent/kid friendship thing going on before we moved to San Diego (maybe just because we were on church staff??) but we’ve not continued it much here…it seems like the friends we’d want to do this with are scattered around the world! That’s what I’m wresting through right now.
Kristen- I’ll reply to you instead of Adam since your comment was longer. This is something we wrestle with a ton. It’s hard when you move states and leave relationships behind. And unfortunately technology helps us stay connected to people from great distance (hence the number of times Adam and I text every day)
but we don’t really have the opportunity to “do life” with people. This was modeled so well by my wifes parents Covenant Group. They literally committed to showing up to every major thing happening in all the 20 kids lives. And they all vacationed together multiple times every year. It was an amazing thing to marry into. We want to recreate that in our own lives and this book is really pushing me to commit to that.
Lars, I’ve always loved Danielle’s parents covenant group and wanted it for my family as well. We’ve yet to find it. Still hopeful for it though!
Martenson- It’s the goal. Keep praying it can happen. Maybe sooner than later.
So happy to say my hubby & I were & still are a part of that ‘covenant group’. We were blessed beyond measure by the constant prayer & support for each other. We now are praying for the grandchildren!!