The Atmosphere of Our Home

One of the many reasons I love Matt is that he is a learner. He does not have the family background that he wishes he had, but he is very intentional about creating a healthy family life for us. In college, he took marriage and family courses and spent time with professors trying to learn about healthy marriage and family relationships. Since we married, he has listened to messages and podcasts and has read many books on creating and leading a healthy, God-honoring family. I love that he likes to discuss with me what we want the atmosphere of our home to be. Recently, we were discussing what we want our family to look like, and Matt later emailed me this quote about parental responsibility from H. Clay Trumbell's Hints on Child Training. 

They must see to it that the atmosphere of their home is such as to foster and develop in their children those traits of character which their loftiest ideal embodies. That atmosphere must be full of pure oxygen of love to God and love to man. It must be neither too hot in its intensity of social activities, nor too cold in its expressions of family affection, but balmy and refreshing in its uniform temperature of household living and being. It must be gentle and peaceful in its manner and movement of sympathetic intercourse. All this it may be. All this is ought to be.

In thinking through this quote, so far I've come up with these goals...

• We want to foster in Sophie and Will character traits based on our values - the traits we aspire to embody ourselves. We want them to be better people than we are - more like the people we wish we were or, maybe, the people we are becoming. In order to foster traits based on our values, we must think carefully through what those are and then act accordingly, remembering that our values are reflected in how we live in front of them, not necessarily in the words we write on paper. 
• We want our home to flow with love for the Lord, love for each other, and love for other people. We want Sophie and Will to see us in a genuine love relationship with our Creator, meaning they will see a relationship that ebbs and flows and has times of great joy and times of hurt, maybe even times of silence, but the overall pattern will be one in which love grows. We want that relationship to matter and affect the relationships in our home. We want to actively love each other even when we don't feel like it. We want to love those outside our home and family - those we know and those we don't know. We want to love other people, and not just those who think, act, or believe like we do. 
• We want to create a peaceful balance in our home, avoiding a schedule overcrowded with activities - even worthwhile activities - that may drain us of the energy required to love each other well. We must take care that we are expressing our love for one another in our words and actions. We want to encourage each other and hug and kiss each other. We want to snuggle in the bed, chase each other around the couch, hold hands on walks, and splash each other in the pool. We want peace - not meaning the absence of trouble, but trust in the midst of trouble that there is One who loves us, who will enable us to love each other.