Just got back from 3 days in the mountains (beautiful!!!) where we kicked off Leaving a Legacy (an arm of Get the Word Out! Intensives). 

The teaching team was Mary Jean Powers (my co-mother-in-law-co-Nonnas-we-share-Hunter),  Joy McGinnis of Seattle, our daughter Tredessa, Dave & Tara, our daughter and son-in-law and Dave and I.

It was wonderful and difficult.  I exposed myself and got honest.  Dave and I both told on ourselves, about the places we have failed in raising children who have come to know and seek after God for themselves.  

I told them that:

• It is never too late to become the family you might have been.  Don’t give up.  Get the Word into your home and family and serve God fearfully with all your might.
• I am still learning to parent in this new season.  I still have to apologize for things as the Holy Spirit reminds me – from both years ago and a few days ago.
• Raising kids who’ll love the Lord?  It’s gonna take at least Forty-Thousand Days of Purpose!  Sorry, Rick Warren.
• And-we have all have dirt under our fingernails.  We’re sowing something into our children’s lives.  We may as well be sowing the incorruptible seed of the Word of God to get the spiritual harvest that God’s Word promises in Gal. 6.  Is your family at a crossroads or troubling time?  Stand on the promises: read ’em, speak ’em, believe ’em, bury them deep in the soil of your heart in faith.  Then?  Eat the fruit!  The harvest WILL come!

Dave taught on journaling as a way to leave your written legacy and not only taught about the blessing (learning to verbally speak blessing over your children), but prayed a bessing over the fathers and fatherless young men who were there.

I wondered aloud, at one point, if there was anyone who could possibly have messed up parenting more than I had.?  Even though Mary Jean and Joy claimed they could have (and maybe we all had that potential), I am so grateful to be living to see the faithful hand of God in our lives, as a family.  We’re still living it and tripping along the way sometimes, but I am so glad for the opportunity to encourage other families that God is faithful.  He promises – and He will keep those promises!  I was honored to get to pass that message along!

Blessed to be a blessing…Jeanie

NOTE TO SELF:  Keep living the legacy.  You have to live it before you can give it away.

pictured: the view just outside our cabin door – if you look very closely, you can see some snow on the rocks from a few days before…we had 70+degrees; my husband praying for our son-in-law Dave just before he (s-i-l) reciprocated.