Steph's Pick | A Birthday Blessings Book

In the spirit of extending birthday celebrations as long as possible (which I'm a strong advocate of doing) I wanted to highlight one of the things I started last year that I just LOVE.

A Birthday Blessing Book.

Last year as we were approaching Nora's birthday I was thinking a lot about how important it is as a parent to give our children our blessing. I was reading The Blessing by Gary Smalley and John Trent and was really encouraged to find practical ways that I could give Nora the gift of our blessing.

Although there are plenty of ways to do this, one of the things I decided to do was start a Birthday Blessing Book - Nora's Birthday Blessings (shown above and below).

It's simply a small notebook that I keep in a safe place throughout the year. On Nora's birthday every year I pull out this little book and write a prayer of blessing as a way to document our prayers for sweet little Ms. Nora.

I specifically chose a bible verse that I use to pray over her throughout the year. A yearly theme verse. (If you're looking for a quick and easy reference for how to pray for your children check out FamilyLife's Lifting My Children Through Prayer Card)

Nora's theme verse for this next year is:

"Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord."

- Romans 12:11

I thought this was a perfect verse for Nora as this past year has been a year of ZEAL! (To read a little more about this check out my recent post on Scottsdale Moms Blog - Rejoicing in your Spirited Toddler). Now our prayer is that this spirit/zeal would turn into true spiritual fervor that would show itself in GREAT service to the Lord.

Although we pray for our kids on a daily basis (well - let's be honest - we WANT to pray for our kids on a daily basis but we're not perfect), I thought a Birthday Blessings Book would be a great way to document some of those specific prayers.

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Note: I have no idea when I'll end up giving these books to our children - more than likely it won't be for a number of years. Because you never really stop giving your children your blessing - even when they are grown and have their own families.