"Would you live daily, His praises to sing? There's wonderful power in the blood!"

 Would you do service for Jesus your King? 

There's power in the blood; power in the blood!

Would you live daily, His praises to sing?

There's wonderful power in the blood!

--Power in the Blood, by Lewis E. Jones (1899) 

I am always full of ideas. I generally think my ideas are wonderful--scathingly brilliant, even. 

Many of my ideas, especially those connected with our home school, require whole-hearted cooperation from those nearest and dearest to me. In my opinion, they should be thrilled and delighted to jump in to each and every one of of my fabulous ideas. 

My family does not always share this opinion. 

Some ideas are, perhaps, too ambitious or unrealistic and they fall by the wayside and simply fade away (or, more likely in my case, languish on a Pinterest board purgatory. I like to think of Pinterest as a place to neatly file away all those ideas, just in case I ever need them). Other ideas--some of the really, really good ones, I keep trying to enact--and then I try again...and again...and again...

One of those ideas is family singing. 

One of my favorite things is to sing together with people--not in a stiff, formal, performance way; just to jam, and especially, to worship. With my little troop, I tried for YEARS to start out our day with singing worship together. My kids like to sing, but they were never really into it and it was a struggle every day to keep their attention and it ceased to be fun, and became one more thing. So it fizzled out. I play and sing by myself most days, and sometimes one or another will join me when they like the song, but it's not the togetherness I envisioned--and I just about gave up on the whole thing.  

Then my husband switched to night shift. 

Bedtimes have been a struggle, I'm not going to lie. My husband was always instrumental in that last big push of the day, getting everyone tucked in for the night, and I have all-too-often succumbed to the temptation to just let every night be a movie night, because that really is easier. I'm all for weekly movie nights, and I love sharing some of those great stories with my babies...but every. single. night. really was not good for us. 

Not to mention, with my husband needing sleep after his shift for much of the day, there was never a time for me to play and sing anymore.

To break out of this, I decided to launch a new thing; instead of trying to start the days with singing (which we can't do now anyway, since daddy is sleeping after his night at work) we end the day wait singing! The kids choose songs for me to play, and we all sing them together (or sometimes, I choose the songs that we'll be singing for church that week, and we practice those!). They bring their stuffed animals in, and they dance (sometimes one of them just sits and turns the pages for me) and it has been such sweet time...together. They've started making new requests and we're adding to our repertoire of favorites. 

They even ask me every night now, "Can we do that singing thing tonight?" 

Um, yes. Absolutely! It's a pajama praise party!

Maybe the idea wasn't such a bad one after all.