Happy 2nd Spiritual Birthday, Summer! (October 18th)

Two years ago, Summer asked Jesus to forgive her sins and be her Savior (read about it here)!  The Bible calls this being born again, and truly Summer was born again as she is such a different person after she decided to follow Christ - her internal conscience is so strong and her love for the Lord is so personal, real, and evident.  Last year was her first spiritual birthday (see here) and so this year, on October 18th, we celebrated Summer's second spiritual birthday!  All throughout the Bible, God calls his people to remember certain times when God made himself real to his people, celebrating and remembering through both tangible memorials as well as holidays.  For us, October 18th is a day for us to remember how God saved Summer from her sins and to CELEBRATE! that fact each year! 

This year, we incorporated our celebration into our third October family fun night (a blog post on all of our October family fun nights will be coming soon!).  I wanted to encourage an idea of servitude on the kids' spiritual birthdays so we had "Summer cooks" be the theme of the evening.  My plan was that Summer would menu plan, cook, get everyone what they needed during dinner, and help cleanup dinner.  In reality, dinner prep with Summer took a bit longer than expected, so we ran into bedtime before she could help with the dishes, however she did an awesome job with the planning and cooking.  She and I cuddled together one afternoon and looked at recipes on Pinterest and she picked out one that she would like to make called Rainbow Spaghetti.  She also made the cheese "cloud" crisps from the afore mentioned recipe for the clouds at the end of the rainbow.  She continued her rainbow theme with fruit salad and sprinkle cookies.  Here are a few pictures of her getting dinner ready.

making the cookie dough

Rolling the cookie balls

Cutting fruit for the fruit salad

Mixing the food coloring for the rainbow noodles

Rainbow Spaghetti!

The rainbow...with the cheese crisp cloud at the end ;)

Rainbow spiritual birthday meal

rainbow fruit salad

rainbow sugar cookies

  During dinner, we read from the blog, looked at pictures, and watched the videos compiled thus far on Summer's 0th, and 1st spiritual birthdays and remembered and celebrated together.  After dinner, we sang to Summer and she blew out her candle :).

Thus far on each spiritual birthday I have attempted to get 1 present that will further their spiritual growth.  Last year, we got Summer a new Bible.  This year, she just got a new Bible from church when she went into kindergarten (I love this Bible by the way and we have been loving reading it together, a chapter each day before she goes to school).  She learned how to look up verses on her own and has been enjoying marking them in her Bible, so we got her a set of special Bible highlighters meant to not bleed through the pages so she can continue to mark special verses as she grows in her knowledge and love for the Lord.

Here is a little raw, unedited video of Summer telling what a spiritual birthday is and what it means to her.  I hope to do this each year to see how she grows in her faith.  I love her passion for telling others about Christ - she is amazing at sharing Christ's love with everyone from neighbors, shopkeepers, her teacher, and her friends at school.  I love her heart!



Lord, thank you so much for working in Summer's heart and drawing her to yourself.  Please continue to keep her on your straight and narrow path.  Protect her physically and spiritually and in purity.  I pray you would bless her with godly friends, teachers, and someday spouse to encourage her in her walk with you.  Please help her to bring glory to YOU and others into your Kingdom and thank you for how you are so evidently working in her life.  Amen!