Years ago when I was a teenager, my mom and dad had 4 teens living at their house. My three older brothers and I were quite a handful. We all had so many different interests and all of our personalities were different. My mom and dad both worked fulltime and sometimes were frustrated with trying to deal with us. So they invented the mood board. The mood board was a corner of the family bulletin board next to the only phone in the house. (Yes, one phone. In the kitchen. My dad had to get up and walk all the way down the hall to the kitchen to answer the phone.)
The mood board was really very simple. It was a piece of paper with our names on it. We each had a thumbtack of our own. And there was a grid that listed different moods like happy, sad, angry, nervous. Each person when they came in was supposed to gauge their mood and move the thumbtack to the right place on the grid. This way my parents had a clue as to who would be less than appreciative of a cheerful joke and who needed some attention. I usually left mine alone. When I was angry or sad I would forget to change it and the moods never lasted that long anyway.
This was a point of contact for my parents. A way to help them meet with us on our own ground everyday.
We usually ate dinner every night together. Many parents use the dinner table to make contact with their children, to find out about their day, feel them out and see where they are in their emotions or spiritually.
But as the children get older and become teens, are in sports, band or chorus, teams, drama or other after school activities, it is more difficult to eat dinner every night together and have enough time to actually talk.
What is your point of contact? How do you touch your teens to let them know you are thinking of them, you love them, and you care about what they think or what they are doing and where? Even a small point of contact can be important to your teen who is probably in the midst of one crisis or another.
I bought my kids texting on their cell phones. I wanted them to be able to contact me at work, silently, and for me to be able to contact them, silently, at school. My provider came up with a very nice plan where I got unlimited texting to anyone on any plan for only $30 a month (we have 4 phones on our plan). With this, I can text my children anytime I want as often as I want and they can text me too.
It makes it nice since I have this new job and I can’t be on my cell phone as much. But I can still text my children or my husband anytime, to say, “I love you”, “How is your day?” or “You are special to me.
I sometimes wonder what it would be like if God could text me, or if I had a point of contact with God? Oh, wait, that would be my devotional time? No, sometimes I need more than that. Sometimes I need a promise or a reminder of a promise of to make it through a moment of my day. So I have placed things in my path. I have a “Remembering Book” (a small notebook of bible verses, promises that have meant something to me at some point) in my car for some word while I am driving. I have posters in my house with bible verses on them. Some people have calendars with verses on them. I have a friend with a painting on the wall at her work.
What is your point of contact?
2 Corinthians 1 (The Message)
20-22 Whatever God has promised gets stamped with the Yes of Jesus. In him, this is what we preach and pray, the great Amen, God’s Yes and our Yes together, gloriously evident. God affirms us, making us a sure thing in Christ, putting his Yes within us. By his Spirit he has stamped us with his eternal pledge—a sure beginning of what he is destined to complete.
2 Peter 1 (The Message)
3-4 Everything that goes into a life of pleasing God has been miraculously given to us by getting to know, personally and intimately, the One who invited us to God. The best invitation we ever received! We were also given absolutely terrific promises to pass on to you—your tickets to participation in the life of God after you turned your back on a world corrupted by lust.
