From Pancake day to Lent...

I really love pancake day. We had pancakes for breakfast and for dinner. Its great fun getting the kids involved, perfecting our flipping. Then comes Lent. I don’t know about you but I’m finding it a bit of a difficult concept to get across to the kids. I’m a bit sporadic when it comes to Lent sometimes it kind of passes me by other times I’ve actively given up something or taken up something. I think it is quite a good time to refocus, a bit like New Year.

I decided we could try and give up treats during the week but let ourselves be a bit indulgent at the weekends (Half term also didn’t count!). Surprisingly the kids have sort of being on board well Harry especially – he even didn’t have his chocolate cake at school for pudding because he said he remembered Lent! I did want to make sure it wasn’t just for the sake of it (though to be fair we definitely could do with eating less junk) but we’re trying to every time we think of chocolate say a quick prayer or just remember Jesus is with us. Just a side note - talking about the Spiritual Fruit of self discipline was a bit over their heads! :)

I also found this lovely prayer plan from care for the family which you can download here It just gives you a sentence to pray with a verse and the idea is you pray it through every month so it doesn’t matter if you miss days you can start again next month. I’ve found it really helpful, though I must confess I’ve only managed 2 out 5 days so far!

I’ve taken up doing a 5 minute abs video (almost!) every day. This is mainly because Harry and his friend beat me at a who can hang the longest on a chin up bar by quite a way. I feel I need to do something about that!

Anyway I am trying to embrace Lent and use it as a way for our family to connect more with Jesus so thought I’d share how its going so far!

Resources

• 30 day prayer plan: https://kitchentable.org.uk/30-days-praying-for-our-children/

• Lent resourse from parenting for faith (this seemed a bit old for my kids so I haven't really explored it): https://www.parentingforfaith.brf.org.uk/lent-journeying-jesus/