First Big Rock

In my effort to move our first big rock (you can read about big rocks here), we are going to take the month of September and concentrate on the first lesson in showing honor. There are 6 lessons in the book I am using as a guide. We'll pick up on lesson #2 in Oct and so on and so on.  I had a wise girlfriend in FL give me a great idea that we are going to try - an honor jar. (Thanks Van!)

We are going to transfer having individual marble jars for the girls, to one honor jar for all of us.  Honor lesson #1 is 'to treat people as special'.  We are going to be looking for the ways that the other three members of the family esteem each other. There are tons of ways to do this, from kind and courteous greetings, being thankful and appreciative, good manners, and acting selfless. As we 'catch' one of us giving respect, we put a marble in the jar. Hopefully by the end of the month we will have the jar full and will celebrate with a fun, special occasion.

There are several reasons I like this idea.  First, it gives us a fresh start to eliminate using the marble jar as punishment. Often we have taken marbles out of the kids jar for undesirable behavior. That deviated from the original plan. Second, it will really help us to seek out the positive and give each other praise and encouragement in order to fill it in a month. Third it will get rid of the negative competition element that has unwittingly developed between the girls and move us toward unity. Also, it really calls Mike and I to the line to be examples as the kids will get to put marbles in the jar when they see us being regardful too.

I am excited to see what creative and fun ways we will find to treat the ones we love most as special.  I am praying that this will be a new habit for us to be looking for the good in people (and not the bad) and to continue in learning how to love.

How about you? What great, fun ways have you found to teach and/or show honor to people? Or what's something that always makes you feel special and honored?