For as long as I can remember I had always wanted to be a mom. So when my husband and I had our daughter, I was thrilled and ready to take on parenthood…or so I thought. We struggled with learning how to do things and we weren’t always on the same page when it came to parenting. Needless to say, this lead to disunity in our marriage for the first several years.

I would turn to friends or family to help us with the struggles we were having because after all, our kids don’t come with an owner’s manual, right? As we grew closer in the Lord we learned very differently. The Bible is our owner’s manual! God teaches us how to raise our kids!

“Train up a child in the way they should go and when they are older they will not depart from it.” – Proverbs 22:6. This is a verse that my husband and I are learning to live by as we parent our daughters. We have learned that God calls us to discipline our children and create structure and boundaries. We have a responsibility to “train” them now while they are in our house so when they leave, they will be responsible adults who follow Jesus.

Then we realized that good parenting started with us having a healthy marriage. It’s important to both of us that we model a good Christ centered marriage for our girls. They are watching to see how we interact with each other, how we handle disagreements, how we treat each other, and how we make decisions in unity.

If we want our children to become responsible adults, it starts with us. If we want our girls to have healthy successful marriages, it starts with us. God blessed us with two beautiful girls and it is our responsibility to train them up in Him.