Every Friday evening afterwork, my husband and I like to take a few hours to “debrief” about the week. We are always busy and right now we only have one child living in the house and he has play practice every day until 6PM so we stay active all week long. Logistically we have always been challenged. We own several businesses, and they are not all in the same city. We stay on the road….
Friday evenings we get to talking about the good, bad, and ugly of each week. One of the things we discuss alongside our week is our studies from the week. And as much as we can, we try to discuss in the morning before we hit the road for the day. He is currently doing an in-depth study of Genesis and I am doing one on Revelation. That was a lot of words to tell you that we talk about those books of the Bible and how what we are studying each week relates to the people we meet, and how it relates to the times we are living in.
A few weeks ago, our conversation got heavy about having dinner with friends and family, especially how we are so sporadic in having dinner with everyone. This whole Covid thing got everyone sideways about one of the most important things we need to be doing, and that is our conversations over breaking bread with family and friends. My husband and I do this with each other and the kids occasionally, but we realized we were missing one very large element. We want to know this about each other, but we want to hear about our family and friends too!
Every Sunday growing-up we headed to one of my grandmothers houses after church for Sunday dinner, or my aunt and uncles house, or they were coming to our house. It wasn’t just about a holiday, it was a requirement, it was just what we did as a family. And part of that was everyone making some sort of dish, whether it was from all of the boy’s recent hunt, what they caught fishing that morning, someone frying up a chicken, or roasting a turkey when it wasn’t thanksgiving or a spaghetti dinner, everyone found that time to get together as a family. Who didn’t look forward to the actual bread bowl???!!!
You know, at the time, we thought it was so time consuming and such a waste of play time as kids, but as we look back when our cousins all got together, those where our friends. I don’t know anyone who didn’t get in trouble playing with their own family and uncovering family secrets under the beds of our grandparents or trying on family jewelry or the boys learning about guns and target practice in the backyard.
My point, our family isn’t just about blood it is also about our friends and neighbors, people we hardly even know too. We have so much to learn and share with the next generations that can’t be captured through technology. It is hands on learning about cooking and sewing, building things, and learning about our history that isn’t in books. It is about sharing experiences and planning, looking at old pictures and discovering family history that got swept under the rug.
Today is a great day to kindle those days and begin to bring back family gatherings and reunions to learn and preserve the best of our world!
I would love to know more about your thoughts on this subject, and your ways of connecting with friends and family. Post below in comments or feel free to email me at [email protected].
I look forward to hearing from you!
Food tastes better when you eat it with your family.
