God's Wisdom vs. Man's Foolishness

I'll have to admit that even though I've been a single mom for over 5 yrs now, it really doesn't get any easier. It's always challenging, but there are moments where it's more challenging than others and it seems like this year has been particularly challenging in a number of areas as my children grow, and we face different circumstances in our lives.

The past couple weeks I've gone back to daily reading a chapter in Proverbs first thing in the morning.  It's been helping me set my feet on the ground, figuratively better.  And, as soon as I began starting my days off correctly, a slew of things to challenge what I've been reading have hit me like a freight train.  There were a number of days I was left sobbing profusely.

I felt so shattered, torn, worn out, depressed, and hopeless.  I questioned my faith in God and whether all that I had done was in vain or not.  Anyway, I won't go into the gory details.

This morning, as I felt frustrated at my own children's repeated poor choices, yet loving my kids so greatly, the Holy Spirit popped into my mind through a series of events to begin something new with my kids.  We've been doing daily gratitudes & blessings for  years now and the newness and freshness of that isn't quite as bright anymore.  I find myself slacking on my own written gratitudes and having a huge gap in between writings, though, I always seem to catch up.

Since my kids and I seem to lack wisdom, what better way than to go to the Source & His Word to guide us.  Duh!  So, daily my kids and I are going to NOT corporately, but individually spend time in 1 chapter of Proverbs a day.  We'll all do the same chapter, that is whatever day it is as there are 31 chapters in Proverbs.  Basically 1/day and on the 30th with no 31 days that month, that will be 2 chapters.

Though I began my own quiet time on my own as a kid, I have to teach my kids how to have a quiet time.  I'm now requiring that they get up at least 1/2 hr early to do their own quiet time with God in Proverbs.  They are to pray and ask the Holy Spirit (HS) to speak to them as they read.  They are to keep a written notebook of 5 things that HS is speaking to them regarding God's Wisdom they can apply to their lives that day.  And, they are to write down 5 things that are Foolish things they do not want to incorporate into their lives.

This is to be done first thing in the morning, so each of us has all day long to implement God's wisdom and meditate on what we read earlier that morning.  Proverbs repeats itself on a lot of things, as we humans never get it right even on repeated tries.

HS will speak to each of us differently, and I'm not going to tell my kids what they need to work on.  I want to see if over the next 30-60 days if this will help my kids make better choices, as well as me.  God bless this time for us.  As my kids grow, they will have to learn to make good choices without me, and it's best that they learn how to hear God at an early age, and how to make choices they will not regret.

Thank you, HS, for giving me this idea.