Thus Began Lent

Today the older two kids spent some time thinking about what sin they wanted to focus on this Lent. They both chose disobedience, and little Bud-Jack said, "Mm-mm my momma." Which I believe meant that was what he wants to work on too :)

Of course J and I should be picking out a sin to confront over the next 40 days, and our marriage discipleship which began last night is leaving us no real choice but to deal with some anger and communication issues. Our meeting with our new mentors last night went very well, in spite of my reservations. They were both extremely encouraging and said some of the nicest things about J and I and our marriage -- they definitely gave us much more credit then I tend to give us. They have us reading through a book called Uprooting Anger. I'll jot down my thoughts on the book later. At any rate, I really enjoyed taking a trip down memory lane as we both rehashed our "life stories" and talked at length about the history of our marriage. It was interesting to see just how different we are, how differently we grew up, and how different we are from both sets of parents -- and how these differences affect our marriage and family. I'm excited about it all, really.

We get homework assignments, just like in our church small group and men's and women's discipleship. This week we are to begin the book, read Ephesians twice (this lines up with group discipleship), go over with our children how God helps us handle temptation, and do three nice things for eachother that we don't normally do. I think we are also supposed to be doing some journaling of various things like what nice things we end up doing for eachother.

Which reminds me. . . I have the kids keeping track of their Lenten journey on a chart. I was thinking I should start a journal to keep track of mine -- that would put me at four journals (five if you count the blog). So maybe I'll combine the Lent and marriage journals since they seem pretty interconnected anyway. I ramble.