The challenge that modern families face is that they never slow down long enough to connect with each other. I am old enough to remember when the family dinner table was part of everyday life. At the end of the day, you sat down together to reconnect with each other and talk about the happenings of the day. Fast forward a few years and we have replaced the evening meal together with our attention being captured by cell phones, iPads, and computers.
When raising our children, my husband and I required our kids to be completely present at the dinner table and engage in conversation with us. And yes, that meant using full sentences not grunts and sarcastic stares. These days, if families sit down at all, it is in shifts, each person grabbing something from the refrigerator and heading off into his/her own corner and their own world.
The wonderful thing about the Christmas holiday is that for a lot of us, it reminds us of simpler times when everything was about the food and family. Sitting around remembering Christmases past and looking forward to the next time we could be together.
My prayer is that this year each of you will think of ways you can bring your family back to the family dinner table more often to reconnect and build new memories together. Remember...