It seems as though my writing comes best when we are leaving places and I am able to reflect on lesson’s learned during that time. When we started living in the camper even in our old driveway Morgan and I knew that this life was going to challenge us to become intentional about life and living. I am not sure if we knew what we were up for. Some of our biggest challenges have been learning how to work closely with each other and to be a team. Seems like something that would just come natural to a couple who has been married for over 10 years, but boy did we have some learning to do.
As a family we are very grateful for freedom and we have had to do some reflecting on what it means to truly be free.
What does freedom look like to us as individuals?
Typically, freedom for me is the idea that I am free to make whatever choices I want and that no one should be able to tell me no. Morgan and I discussed this in detail and came to the conclusion that this is our cultural norm in America - Land of the Free.
We have this almost sense of entitlement that we are free to make any and every decision that we want. Based on our individual freedom.
What does freedom look like for us as a family?
The freedom to decide what we do, how we do it and when we do it. The key difference here is now we have to have buy in from the whole family, as freedom is not being told what to do but enjoying the ability to do something together. For us as we reflected on this question we decided that family freedom is the choice and ability that we have to homeschool our kids, to decide where we want to go to church, to decide where we move next, what ventures we will go on during each stop and how we our spend time together.
Discipline is key to success when working together as a team. The first step to working on discipline is having a set of rules or expectations to follow; guiding principles by which we are to live by. For us that first step was setting up a family schedule by which everyone agreed on and we could all hold each other accountable. This routine ensures that we get done the important things everyday like bible study as a couple and as a family, cleaning, dog walking time, school, work, or any other projects that we would be working on. This has been working great for us! Each night we spend a few minutes writing out the plan of action for the next day. That way no one is surprised by what happens at what time.
The next step for us is establishing family rules or values that we all live by, this allows for everyone to live by the same set of standards and eliminates the “do as I say, not as I do” motto that we often fall into as parents. We are doing this because we are called to live by a set of moral standards by God, meaning I am not exempt from following rules I expect my kids to follow. Especially since Morgan and I are the primary example for our kids we strongly desire to set a good example.
Deuteronomy 8:5 Therefore, know in your heart (being fully cognizant) that the Lord disciplines and instructs you just as a man disciplines his son.
We got the idea of the family rules listening to the Dad Edge Podcast with Matt Beaudreau titled "Design a Family Operating System of High Standards and Character" (link below). Hearing about getting full family buy in and having a set of standards that everyone is held accountable to made so much sense to us! It is the very nature of working together as a team. I would highly encourage giving it a listen. For us this is still new and it is a working progress but the schedule has been a life saver and an easy option for gaining some control over your life.
The set of rules that we have established are still a working progress and I am excited to share more as we continue to live them out and work together to be a highly functioning family unit.
Until next time! Thanks for reading and follow the blog for updates on new posts.
Link:
Dad Edge-
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