It’s easy to say, “I love you”, to your kids, but how do you show them the truth behind those three little words? Many times parents think that showing their love for their kids involves expensive vacations and toys, dinners out on the town, sleepovers with friends,etc. While these may be things that your kids (and maybe you) enjoy, they don’t show your kids that you truly love them.

There are two things that are key to showing your love to your kids. You. and. Time. 

In order to show your kids that you love them, you must be willing to give of yourself, by giving them time with you. It doesn’t cost a dime to show your kids how much you love them. The question is, will you take the time to show your kids that you love them?

Taking time to show your kids that you love them is an important part of parenting and it should be done frequently.

Spend Time with Your Kids

All too often parents get lost in everything that they have to get done every day, so it is best if we set up a weekly or monthly schedule for spending quality time with our kids. There are many ways to spend time with our kids without leaving our home or spending more than a few dollars, below are just a few ideas to get started!

• Movie nights are a lot of fun! Pop some popcorn, choose a movie together (or surprise them with one from Netflix or Redbox), and enjoy the snuggles and laughs!
• Game nights can provide a fun and often learning experience for you and your child! Take turns picking games that you both enjoy and throw in a couple that you’ve never played together too!
• Craft or Lego® nights allow you to be creative together while having quality conversation and more with your kids!

Listen to Your Kids

Another important way to show our kids that you love them is to listen to them. As parents we can’t expect our children to truly listen to us if we aren’t listening to our children as well. We need to ensure that we take time to listen to what our kids are saying, listening is one of the best ways to strengthen and deepen our relationship with our kids!

We need to make sure that we are looking at them when they are talking to us, kids will stop talking when they can tell we aren’t actually listening to what they have to say. Below you’ll find a few simple ways to consistently take time to listen to what our kids have to say.

• Get them up to bed 30 minutes before lights out and spend time cuddling and talking with them about their day. Be ready to just listen, you never know when they will just open up!
• Some kids may have a hard time talking period or about certain topics, correspondence notebooks are a great way to encourage your kids to “talk” to you.
• After dinner don’t rush off from the dinner table, the dishes will wait, I promise. Enjoy listening to your kids tell you about their day, a new game or book and anything else that may come to their minds.

Talk to Your Kids

Notice that listening to your kids came before talking to them. In order for our kids to truly listen to what we have to say, we have to know what they are thinking and listen to what they are saying. Parents often think that their kids don’t listen, but if we listen to them, more often than not we’ll either hear them repeating what we say or agreeing with it. An important point to remember is that talking to our kids shouldn’t always be to discipline or instruct, we need to take steps to build quality conversation and relationships with our kids.

• Sit down with a cup of hot tea or coffee and just listen to what your kids have to say. Somehow sitting down and enjoying a hot beverage with our kids opens them up and we can have great conversations with them!
• Cook together! Spending time together in the kitchen is a great way to create both memories and conversation with our kids!
• Take a walk (or a hike if you are adventurous!) Getting out away from electronics and into nature is freeing for parents and for kids

I encourage you to make it a goal to truly show your kids that you love them this year by spending quality time with them! Remember, it is not about the money you spend on them, but the time you spend with them! 

How do you show your kids that you love them?

The post Simple Ways to Show Love to Your Kids first appeared on True Aim.

We love and understand each other far deeper than we did on our wedding day. The following marriage tips are what I have found to really make a difference in our family.

A lot of marriage advice seems to only teach you how to keep a smile on your face while you put a band-aid on your problems and hope for the best. That is not what I want as a wife or as a Christian woman.

I want my marriage to serve the greater purpose of glorifying God, and all the rest will come more naturally once priorities are in the right order and our eyes are on eternity. I want to really get to the heart of any issues that arise and prevent them in the first place. Here are 10 of my favorite tips that have made a difference in my own marriage.

Advice for Marriages That Will Last a Lifetime

Keep Jesus First and at the Center

Keep Jesus First and at the Center – This is more than the occasional prayer together before meals or bed. This means having an accountability to each other to be spending quality time with the Lord both together and separately. My husband and I especially love to worship together.

All problems (marriage or otherwise) seem smaller when placed in His capable hands. This intimacy with God helps marriage on so many levels. We are more humble, kind, forgiving, understanding, etc. with each other. When you are at peace and less stressed or worried about life’s problems, you are going to be more patient and less critical of your spouse. We are better spouses when we are walking closely with the Lord.

Maintain Your Original Friendship

One thing that most people love about the dating phase is having fun getting to know each other and becoming each other’s best friend. Well, don’t stop!

It is important to keep celebrating one another and laughing together. Here’s a fun fact – It is (nearly) impossible to be stressed and really laugh at the same time! I have found that when my husband and I laugh and have fun together, I appreciate and enjoy him so much more.

Don’t Serve Leftovers

I’m not talking about food here. I’m talking about you and your energy and attention. How do you feel when you can tell you are last on someone’s priority list? Not good. So, don’t give everyone and everything else your best only to offer your family what is left over.

A surefire way to grow apart from someone is to spend NO quality time together. Make sure you offer your best to your family. Part of this is learning to say no and live at a slower pace.

Steer Clear of Unrealistic Expectations

You need to protect your heart against unrealistic expectations. Remain mindful and cautious when reading romance novels or watching romantic movies. Love is not always romantic like that, especially after kids come along. It should still be at times, but that is not the purpose of marriage, nor should it be all that fulfills you.

Here is a great quote from Joy Forney – “Real romance is finding that one spot in the crook of his arm to snuggle into, that shared look over the dinner table when the kids are acting crazy, and the way he fixes the leaky sink when he is dog-tired after work.”

My husband stole my heart again when he got in the tub last week to give our newest baby her first bath. That’s real love from a real man.

Know Where Your Worth Comes From

Find your worth and security in the Lord. He is what gives us meaning, not our significant other. Finding your worth and fulfillment in another human being will only result in disappointment, not to mention the unfair pressure that it places on your spouse.

Don’t Compare

Do not compare your husband to other husbands. That is a pitfall that will only lead to self-pity, anger, criticism, envy, etc. Besides, you have no idea what another husband may be like behind closed doors, so in addition to it being wrong and detrimental, it is impossible to do accurately, which only hurts the situation further. We should be trying to better our own flaws rather than shining a light on our spouse’s anyway.

Love in Their Language

Ask the right questions to make sure you know how to best serve, love, and support your spouse. What means a lot to you may mean nothing to them, so make sure you are serving in their love language rather than your own. It is important to keep asking the right questions because the answers may change as your relationship grows.

Don’t Do Marriage Alone

You should have some form of accountability outside of your marriage. This can be an older Christian couple whom you respect or separate individuals (a woman for the wife and a man for the husband) whom you can share with and remain accountable to with struggles that may arise. However, this is not a free for all pass to complain about your spouse.

Always Speak Positively about Your Spouse

As tempting as it may be sometimes, never throw your spouse under the bus. It does no good to complain or speak negatively about your significant other to other people, especially in front of them. It is disrespectful and only feeds any problems you are having. Above all, this includes your children! Never undermine your husband or wife in front of your kids.

PRAYER

The most important and impactful thing you can do for your marriage and your spouse is pray for them! This is not meant to be a self-serving prayer checklist, but rather placing your spouse, their heart and mind, and their struggles at the Lord’s feet. Wives, check out the prayer section of a post I wrote on Encouraging Your Husband to get ideas and ways in which you can pray for your husband.

Nowhere in the Bible does it say that the purpose of marriage is to be happy or to feel fulfilled or complete. I desire to be happy and make my husband happy, but that comes naturally once our Biblical priorities are in order. If we are living how God wants us to, then marriage can be one of life’s greatest blessings!

Please comment below with some of your favorite marriage tips!

The post No Longer Newlyweds: Marriage Advice That Works! first appeared on True Aim.

To help us remember how much God loves us, we hung our hearts as a mobile at the kitchen table.  It’s festive and every time we sit to eat a meal we read one of the Bible verses on the hearts.  This is such a great way to memorize scripture, we might have to make a new mobile for each month!  Here’s what we did.

Bible Heart Craft

First I made this free heart printable to make it easy. I printed off one copy for the kids to share, but you could have each child do their own set.

 

Here are the verses I included:

• “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.” ~1 Corinthians 13:4

• “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God.” ~1 John 4:7

• “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” ~Matthew 22:39

• “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” ~1 John 4:10

• “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”  ~Deuteronomy 6:5

• “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” ~John 3:16

If you have a specific verse in mind, please email me and I can send you my template in a word document so you can included any verses you want.

Next, we colored the hearts with the Bible verses, being careful not to cover the words up.

With the other blank hearts, we did a little crayon resist with tissue paper.  Before we started “painting” with the tissue paper, I wrote a secret symbol in white crayon that represents God’s love.

To do this craft, the girls painted their hearts with water and then covered them with small squares of tissue paper.  Adding more water on top, the color bleeds onto the paper creating a tie-dye effect.  I first saw this tissue paper craft on one of my favorite art blogs for kids, Artchoo.

After the water dried, I had the girls remove the tissue paper to reveal God’s love.  It’s a cross, of course!

I hung our hearts above the table with fishing line.  Now, before each meal we review one of the verses to put it to memory so my girls know how much God loves them.  They’ll also know what love really looks like; sacrifice.

If you liked this heart Bible craft, you might like these activities to teach children more about God’s love.

Check out my Bible eBook set for more ways to instill God’s word in the hearts of your children!

For more Bible crafts and activities, like me on Facebook or follow me on Pinterest.  Thanks for your support!

The post Heart Bible Craft and Bible Love Verses Free Printable first appeared on True Aim.

My husband and I have so much fun together writing the things that we love about our kids that it has become a favorite tradition. Each morning our kids excitedly run from their bedrooms to their chairs to find another encouraging card. We love letting our kids write their own love notes to each other and hanging all of them up on the walls each day. By the end of February we not only have great decorations, but an entire wall of love notes for your kids to read and enjoy!

Encouraging Character

We try hard to encourage character qualities that we see being developed in our kids.  Instead of just saying to our daughter, “We love how you care for your brother”, we like to be more specific by saying something like, “We love how you show your brother compassion by helping him with his school”.  We know they work hard at their character and it’s the perfect way to acknowledge it!

We also throw in silly compliments of things our kids do that give us such joy.  We’ve complimented everything from dance moves, to silly faces, to the sound of their laughter.  Whether it’s funny or encouraging, our kids thrive on hearing that they please us.  

I would like to think that years down the road after our kids are grown, they’ll look back on this tradition and remember feeling valued, loved, appreciated, and enjoyed.  That they would remember that although this little craft was special in February, it was really only special in the physical form.  That the encouragement, the praise, the laughter, and the sense of pride we have for them was just as obvious every other month of the year.  Love envelopes come out once a year, but the joy I have in watching their tender hearts form and yield into the incredible plans God has for them each day is something I want them to always remember!   It’s the driving force behind why I homeschool!

For more activities like these, like us on Facebook or follow us on Pinterest. 

Thanks for reading! 

The post Valentine’s Day Crafts for Kids: Love Notes first appeared on True Aim.