(part 5 of 14 of the “Honor Dare“)
Dare: Plan a family night. Enjoy each other’s company for two hours or longer.
Verse: If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. (Mark 3:25)
Laura will be the first one to tell that I’m not typically the game organizer of the family. Don’t get me wrong, I grew up playing family games a lot as a kid – but we just weren’t the flashy kind. I remember playing a lot of games as a kid with my friends and sister – but with my family it was usually a holiday/special occasion thing. I always had a good time (at least when I/we won), however, the existance of games or not didn’t determine if the time together was “real quality time”.
Then I met Laura and her family. Any time we’re together for more then a few hours somebody always utters the words, “Who wants to play a game?” If it were always just board games that would be one thing. Unfortunately for me it’s often the kind of game where you have to write words down on paper or act something out or… well, it usually requires effort above the actual playing of the game and often requires me to go up against a family of word smiths. Until recently, this was not fun for me.  And the problem is, I’ve been with Laura for almost 8 years now… so it’s been a long road of getting used to the concept that it’s not REALLY family time if we don’t play a game. (OK, in all fairness to any Nazimek’s reading this post – I always ended up having fun… it was the process that I just didn’t get. You people rock – don’t worry!)
Probably two years ago it did finally hit me that this was a good time – that spending time huddled around a deck of Dutch Blitz, a board of Sequence or a table of speed Scrabble was a good thing. As everyone has grown older we don’t get much time with everyone now and we actually get to talk about a lot more when we’re playing games then when we’re sitting in front of the TV or mesmorized by Facebook locked away in our room. I actually get to find out what’s going on with everyone and laugh (and often loose too… but I digress).
Go dig through the game closet and find that game you remember playing a couple of years ago after Thanksgiving dinner that everyone enjoyed. Set a time, invite the peeps and make sure you have a good bag of snacks on hand.