Experiencing God at Home by Richard Blackaby, Tom Blackaby Read Free Book Online

western Canadian province of Saskatchewan. I grew up in a home with four boys and one baby sister who was tacked on at the end. Lisa was raised in a family of seven girls and one brother (who was understandably upset when he had to wear hand-me-downs!).
    Another major difference between us was our parents. Lisa’s mother came from French Canadian roots. My mother was an American from Oklahoma. Lisa’s parents mostly limited their social life to occasional bridge games with quiet friends (with eight children, they were kind of busy!). My mother is an off-the-shelf extravert who regularly fed the multitudes passing through the minister’s home. Lisa’s father did manual labor most of his life. He could fix or build anything. He constructed the home Lisa grew up in and would periodically add on a room when more children arrived. He never traveled on business, and Lisa has no memories of her father being away from home overnight. My father is also a Canadian, but his bank manager father never taught him how to fix anything. As a result, my dad never taught me how to fix anything (I only passed Industrial Arts class in high school due to the mercy and long-suffering of my teacher, who did not want to see me return for another year). Dad often traveled to fulfill speaking engagements. I recall one mealtime where my mother prayed for our father as he was speaking in a large meeting in Texas that day. It was the first we children knew our father was gone, and he had been away all week! These divergent views of our parents would provide some challenges for Lisa and me later in life.
    Lisa and I did experience a few things in common. We both grew up in loving homes where family was considered important. Both of our homes abounded with laughter. My father afflicted his children with the world’s worst puns. Lisa’s father could put you into hysterics with his self-depreciating humor. Lisa and I were also born into families where religious faith was central. We also both grew up in homes within sight of the poverty line! The houses we grew up in were modest (and crowded), and money was scarce. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, both of our families opened their presents on Christmas morning and not on Christmas Eve, as some less civilized people do!
    As a young adult, I concluded that four children would be a perfect family size, so I looked for who the lucky mother was going to be! Lisa, on the other hand, had watched a rather graphic film on childbirth during a health class in high school and henceforth concluded that zero children would make a perfect family. We would have some negotiating to do!
    Our personalities are also diametrically opposed. I am rather task oriented, cognitive, focused, and a long-range planner. Lisa, on the other hand, loves a party and is always coming up with ways to make ordinary living a lot of fun. She is a feeler who for years assumed she had married someone who made Spock look like an emotional basket case! She is also, well, not exactly focused. In fact, she is extremely random. I’ll give you one example. She uses a weekly pill organizer for her vitamins and medications. However, she cannot bear to be enslaved to always Tuesday’s meds on Tuesdays, so she will randomly take pills from whichever bin she feels like on that particular day, which of course causes problems later when she can’t remember if she took her meds or not! Thankfully, she’s not as random as her sister Paulette who, after hosting a party at her house, found a full pot of coffee chilling in the refrigerator. And as for long-range planning? For Lisa, delayed gratification means the time you have to wait for UPS to deliver your online purchase. So you can imagine what it was like for us when we found ourselves as parents who needed to decide how we were going to jointly rear our three children.
    Our Children
    Let’s face it: not all children are the same. Some have colic; others coo and gurgle continuously. Some