Christian Parenting.

Christian Parenting.

Hey friends, welcome back to Pardon in the Mess.

I'm your host, Courtney Defeo, and we are going to pray today about forgiveness, the topic of forgiveness,

and we're on week 20. Can you believe us? I mean, yay us. We've been praying for our kids 20 weeks of the school year, and we're going all the way through May. So get excited and invite a friend. If they haven't done it so far, it's not too late to join in. And I think for me and hopefully for you, this is such a great way to start the week to say, okay, Lord, help me rise up and pray for specific things for my kids. And let us not just start reeling and fear and worry and all the to-does of life right out of the gate, but that we would just kind of pull up and see the bigger picture. But before we get to that, speaking of the bigger picture, Ron and I had a

calendar meeting, which he loves a calendar meeting. If y'all know Ron, you're laughing and know that he loves to plan. And he's literally like a little bit like Rain Man with his calendar. He knows exactly what dates. I could ask him like, hey, October 12th next year, what are you doing? And he would know, it's just crazy, but I've learned if we're going to get along in this marriage, I've got to

like engage in this. I'm like, hey, October 12th next year, what are you doing? And he would know. It's just crazy.

But I've learned if we're going to get along in this marriage, I've got to, like, engage in this calendar process. And I actually love it. Even being ADD and spontaneous and fly by the seat of my pants, I actually love knowing that we've put the big rocks in. We've put vacations in. We've put time with our family in. we have put, yeah, just the big important things in our calendars so those don't get missed along the way. And so Larson and I both

got like a year-long calendar from, let's see, mine is called French Studio. It's from Target.

It's super, super thin. I put everything on my digital calendar, but this year long,

able to look like at a month at a glance is super helpful. And even if you can find one that's a

year at a glance, you can see like, whoa, we're trying to accomplish way too much. Or, whoa,

we have a lot of room in March. Let's see what we can accomplish as a family then. And so it was

the first time Ron and I had the meeting where we

included Larson and whoa. She brings some clarity and some sharp brain skills that I don't have

and she remembers things that I've forgotten. And so I would just encourage you, if you have not

kind of looked at the year as a family, kind of what do you guys want to accomplish in the year?

What are trips you want to take?

What are, who are people you want to be with? And look at it and also see for people like me that

put way too much on a calendar. It's good to see like, okay, in March, we are trying to do

way too much. And this is going to make us super stressed. One of the things, Ron always does

well is he puts margin in between our things. So if we're going on a trip, he likes to get back a day early. And if it were up to me and Larson, we would just go back to back to back doing things. And so it's just really, really helpful as a family to pause and look at things together. And what a fun thing to have a teen that's old enough to understand a calendar and that she brings such value to the

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