The Spiritual Environment of Your Home

The spiritual environment of your home is an essential pillar for a bright and cheerful, happy and joy-filled home.  Bringing faith alive in our homes is what brings peace and joy to all who live there. Two other pillars are: the PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT, and the EMOTIONAL ENVIRONMENT.

The Spiritual Dimension of our Marriage

Having God at the center of our relationship with our husband is critical to a long, happy marriage.  Relationships are hard, and the ups and downs of any marriage requires a supernatural outlook – a reason bigger than us.

Did you know that getting your spouse to heaven is the primary objective in marriage?  We are entrusted with this spouse to love and forgive, to challenge and accept – to help him become holy, while we also struggle to become holy.  Don’t do that by nagging or pointing out his faults.  Instead, pray for him, accepting him with all his strengths and weaknesses, challenging him in a loving way to live with more virtue, and supporting him in his struggles. So, pray for your husband daily…maybe many times a day!

Prayer as a Couple

Praying together as a couple each night is a way to bond with each other that can’t be matched.  There have been many nights when we were still simmering from an argument or hurt, and we reached out for each other’s hand (as we always do when we pray) and the anger, hurt, and resentments melted away. 

Each couple’s prayer time will be different.  See what works for you.  Here are some ideas of what to pray for together:

• Thank God for the day and any special blessings received that day.
• Thank Him for your marriage and your family, and ask Him to bless your family with unity and faith.
• Ask God to bless your marriage – to help you both be patient, kind, not jealous, quick-tempered or rude…..and ask Him to help you bear all things, believe all things, hope in all things, and endure for many, many years to come.
• Pray for each of your children and any particular struggles they may be having, and include any other relatives you’d like to include. 
• Remember specific intentions each of you may have.
• Recite common prayers together.

How to Teach Your Children to Love God

The most effective way to teach the faith to your children is to live the faith – to let it breathe in your family.  Follow the Liturgical year, celebrating the Holy days as the Church celebrates them. Have good conversations about Jesus and His life as soon as you can when they are very young (1-2 yrs).  You can also begin teaching them prayers very early.  They may not be able to say every word correctly, but they’ll master them as they get older.

Pray together as a family each night before the children go to bed.  We used to get everyone in their PJ’s, brush teeth, and then we would sit together in the family room to say our prayers together.  This was a great opportunity to get the children in the habit of thanking God for specific things of the day.  Each child has the chance to say, “Thank you, God for….”. 

Showing our Children our Trust in God

Praying together as a family also allows the children to see our humility and dependence on God.  We also vocalize our prayer intentions when we pray together as a family.

When Michael was diagnosed with stage III colon cancer 15 years ago, every night as a family, we prayed a special prayer that Michael wrote asking God for a complete cure if it was God’s will.  I think that our children saw our submission to God and his goodness – that we accepted a higher being and were subject to His will rather than our own.  The children heard us asking God for help.  We will not convince our children of God and His love by telling them over and over that they must believe.  We will convince them by how WE love, how WE pray, and ultimately, how WE believe.

Make Sunday Church an Important Event

Make the Lord’s day on Sunday a reality – a big deal.  Go to church together in your Sunday best.  We had 1-2 “church clothes” outfits with church shoes that the children wore every Sunday.  No jeans, no shorts, no tennis shoes.  We dressed up and taught the children the importance of going to church as if we were going to see the most important person in the world – and we were!  And church was always followed with a donut or bagel stop.  We brought the deliciousness home, sat around the kitchen table and just spent some lazy time together before everyone went off about their day.

We Can’t Give What We Don’t Know

It is up to the parents to teach their children their faith.  Don’t leave that to the schools or CCD classes or anyone else.  Learn your faith. Read the Bible, attend a retreat each year, read good spiritually nourishing books, and commit to a life of personal prayer – at least 10-15 minutes a day to take your personal intentions to Him, but more importantly to listen to Him and what He has to say to you.

And while it is important to teach our children the facts of our faith, it can be done easily without pounding memorization facts every day into their little heads.  When I was homeschooling, so many people asked what texts I used.  I did use the “Faith and Life” series, but as I said before, the children really learned their faith because their mom and dad learned their faith, loved their faith, and practiced their faith.  God was another member of our family who was spoken about regularly.

“This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.

No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life

for one’s friends.” Jn 15:12-13

Love One Another

This is how we deal with each other in the home.  We teach our children that ‘laying down our life’ can mean giving up our will, not arguing or demanding their own way and being kind when we don’t feel like it.  We teach the children to love each other with the same spirit of sacrifice that Jesus had.  And we love our spouse the same way.

Teach your children to forgive – 70 X 7 times.  Which is a fancy way of saying always, perfection, to the very end.  As parents, we model forgiveness for our children – quickly forgiving our spouse and never holding on to resentments. 

Where to Begin?

If you don’t live a strong faith life in your family already, talk with your husband about that missing piece.  Come up with a strategy (small steps in the beginning) to bring the faith alive in your home.  I can absolutely guarantee you that it will make a profound difference in your family and home life.

Make a resolution to speak with your husband.  Help him lead the family to a more faith-filled atmosphere.  Come up with just 1-2 ways you can bring the faith alive in your home.  Begin with church on Sunday, every Sunday.  When you master those new ways, come up with 1-2 more ways. 

If you have any suggestions about how to enhance the spiritual environment of your home, please feel free to comment!

Have a great day!

Janet