[Editor’s note: The author explains her family’s Lenten commitment to take the Love Dare here . Regular updates will be posted all through Lent. Click here to catch up on previous posts. Due to CE staff scheduling, we will not be able to keep up with these posts daily, but we will make sure they are all posted, even though it means they run past Lent. ]
Recognize that family members are important to your success and ask them for input for decisions.
“If two lie down together they keep warm, but how can one be warm alone” (Ecclesiastes 4:11).
This dare started a really interesting discussion at our home. We ran through different times when we had ignored each other’s advice and what the outcome of those situations was. We discovered that we usually know what’s best for each other.
For instance, my husband and I had an instinct about a time that our daughter went to visit a friend that we didn’t really feel good about. She ended up realizing we had been right. Our older kids have great instincts about who their siblings should and shouldn’t date. Again, their instincts are usually right on.
It works positively too. Our son was very helpful in steering his younger sister to some positive coping mechanisms for dealing with her anxiety disorder, because he had overcome severe obsessive compulsive disorder.
What is surprising us the most, as we come towards the end of our love dare, is how much we already knew about each other and how much more we still have to learn.
Lord, help us to listen to advice given by family members (even when we don’t like it). Our family has a stake in our success, they will not steer us wrong.
