Legacy - Don’t Trade Away Things That Don’t Fade Away

This past weekend I attended a memorial service for a long-time friend.  The guy was a legend, a pioneer and of the course of his life had amassed a slew of awards, accomplishments and accolades.  I was impressed and if I’m honest, felt like perhaps I wasn’t living up to my potential to be all that I could be.  The competitive nature in me kicks in pretty easily.  Whenever I meet someone who is accomplishing great stuff, it challenges me to ask, am I doing all that I can?  Yet, amidst the service, which was very moving I thought, at least as memorial services go, there was something sad that I noticed.  It seemed to me that the man’s children who were at the service (and not all of them even bothered to come), didn’t see to share in everyone else’s celebration of his life.  I’d like to think it was their grappling with their own sense of loss and grief that held these grown children back.  But I don’t think that was it.

 

As noble and visionary as my friend was, he wasn’t perfect.  And who is?  But throughout much of his younger days, while he was working, pioneering and conquering, he was away from home and probably not investing in the lives of his own children like he could have.  If he were alive today, I think he’d tell you this was probably his greatest regret.  In First Corinthians 13, known as the “love chapter” it says that if I do all these great things, give away lots of money, help lots of people but have not love, I am nothing but a noisy gong or a tinkling cymbal.  Well the parenting corollary to those verses would read something like this: “If I amass a great fortune, and become famous for my contributions to society, if I start ministries and help the homeless, but don’t invest the necessary time and attention in my own children, well, I’ve sacrificed my highest calling on the altar of fame and success.  I am nothing.”  God’s design for us is to embrace our role as His children, receive His love and then pass that love on to and in to our own children.  Start there.  Accomplish that and everything else that you achieve in life is just a bonus!

What Do Missionaries Know That We Don’t?

I’m not sure I know the answer to this question but there must be something.  The other day I was speaking to a new acquaintance who spent years as a missionary.  As I typically do, I asked about his family, his kids.  He proceeded to tell me how each one was doing, how they were making their way in the world.  I admit I was jealous.  Each child was living life with a sense of mission and purpose, making a difference in the world.  This is not the first time I’ve talked to a current or former missionary and discovered that not only are their kids well adjusted, they are thriving. So what gives?  You’d think that kids who are yanked from the security of family and friends and carted off to some strange part of the globe would wind up angry, resentful and somewhat a mess.  Now I’m sure there are some children of missionaries who would identify with this.  But in general it seems to me that missionary kids grow up with a real sense of purpose, solid self-image and are, well healthy.

 

I suspect the answer lies in the simple fact that they grew up in homes (or huts) where they saw their parents living with that sense of mission and purpose and so guess what, they grow up with a similar understanding that they were created by a loving God who has a mission for them.  They live their lives on purpose and for a purpose.  Maybe they don’t have it all figured out…most of us don’t.  But instead of assuming that they are some random being in a random world, they grow up believing that they can accomplish something…that there’s a mission for them to fulfill and they go after it.

 

Living with that sense of mission in purpose is more caught than taught.  So it begs the question, how do you live your life?  What values are you instilling in your kids, not by what you say, but by how you spend your time, what things you make a priority in life.

The Importance of Tradition

We live in a culture that’s changing at such a rapid pace that emotionally, I’m not sure we are keeping up.  More and more, it’s a throw-away society.  For example, I found out my stereo receiver, which I just bought a few years ago, is, according to my friend, already “old school” technology.  Geeez. 

 

What has this got to do with parenting you ask?  I am constantly amazed at how important creating and keeping family traditions are to our kids.  This morning I was having coffee with a friend at McDonalds.  I noticed a dad having breakfast with his son.  It occurred to me that if that dad has breakfast with his son on any kind of a regular basis, he is creating a powerful tradition that will be more meaningful and helpful to that young boy than that father could possibly realize.

 

Our kids long for and need consistency in their lives.  It’s an insecure, unreliable world in which we live.  So anything we can do as busy moms and dads to create traditions, memories that our unique to our children’s experience, well that’s powerful stuff.

 

Over 15 years ago I started a tradition where on Christmas Eve, I would make a tunnel out of cardboard boxes that meandered through the house and ended up in front of the Christmas tree.  On Christmas morning the boys would wake up and couldn’t go downstairs to open presents until I gave the all-clear signal.  They had to go through the tunnel to get to the tree.  It seemed like a fun idea initially.  But being a guy, every year the tunnel has to somehow “outdo” last year’s monstrosity.  This year the tunnel started out of the upstairs bathroom window, down a box-covered  extension ladder, into the back of my oldest son’s Avalanche, around the car, through the garage, past trap-doors and “decoy” tunnels that lead to nowhere, down the back hall, nothing but net…to the Christmas tree.  Close to 200 boxes and several hours after the start of the project, the tunnel is complete.  Now understand that I have one son out of college, one in college and the youngest is a junior in high school.  It’s not like the tunnel is a kid-project any more.  But none of my sons want to give up the tunnel creating event.  Why?  It’s a tradition at our house.  It’s something that we share together as a family that nobody else (that we know of) does.  Therefore it’s a powerful communicator of my love to my sons, that they are special and that we have something special we share between us.  It’s a tradition.

 

So what traditions can you start?  It doesn’t have to be as complex as building a Christmas even box tunnel.  It can be as simple as Saturday morning breakfast with your child at McDonalds.  Don’t discount the importance of making memories, anchored in love through simple traditions you keep with your kids. 

Learn To Be An Internet Spy

These days our kids spend more and more time connecting and communicating on the internet. Between IM (Instant Messaging), E-mails, Text Messaging, FaceBook and MySpace, our kids connect in more ways that we as parents just didn’t have access to when we were kids.  With us it was either face to face or on the phone conversation.  That was it.  But now days, a large percentage of our kid’s conversations from middle school through college transpire in some form or another over the internet.  And since it’s every kid’s mission to divulge as little information to their parents as possible and likewise, it’s every parent’s challenge to find out as much information as possible, if we are to stay “in the know” as proactive moms and dads, we have to become internet sleuths, or in truncated text-speak, IS. 

 

Why is this important?  Well for example, the other day my son tells me that he was at a party at a friend’s house and assured us that the parents were home.  However, in reviewing some of his internet communications we learned that not only were the parents not home but there was alcohol and smoking going on at the party,  Funny, how that didn’t come out in the typical “So how was the party” recap conversation we had with our son.  By being good internet spies we’ve learned certain code words.  When a kids says he needs a “band-aid” that’s code for AL (alcoholic beverage) and if a kids says he’s going to the “weight room” that’s code for a party.  Of course these codes are not universal and so don’t assume if your child says he’s staying after school to go to the weight room to work out that he’s really heading for trouble.  My point is simply this, that as parents we have a responsibility to pay attention to what’s going on in our children’s lives and to not naively assume that everything they tell us is the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me God.  All I’m saying is that if you have teenage children in the house, you have a responsibility to be proactive in knowing what’s going on in your son or daughter’s life.  Let them know that being on the internet is a privilege and not a right and you expect them to both be responsible in their actions and communicate with their friends in an honest and proper way.  You should insist on knowing the login password to all their accounts and let them know that you have the right to periodically check their correspondence.  If you find improper language or behavior coming from your son or daughter, don’t stick your head in the sands of denial, deal with it.

Selfish Parenting

I’m reading a wonderful book that was recently recommended to me called “The Shack” by William Young.  It’s a novel about a typical 50-ish man who had a pretty dysfunctional childhood yet managed to come through adulthood in reasonably good shape, married well, had kids.  Then an unthinkable tragedy strikes that sends him into a tailspin.  He winds up having a life-changing encounter with God that’s well, unique.  Anyway, I won’t give up the plot.  But one of many truths I see in this story is how each of us is wounded.  We are damaged goods and our pain causes us to see life and respond to life in certain, unhealthy ways.  The sad fact is that unless we are exceptionally diligent, we bring our pain and dysfunction into our parenting style.  We parent our kids through our pain and as a result, often leave them scarred and hurting as well. 

 

Most of us would never intentionally hurt our kids.  But unfortunately, in our desire to hold on to our hurts, in our fear of pushing past the pain of old scars into wholeness, we selfishly thrust on our kids all sorts of unhealthy and unholy attributes and perspectives.  Seriously, we have to be willing to unselfishly lay down our hurts, get the prayer, the counseling the comfort and help we need, if not to live better ourselves but to be more effective parents.  I’ll never forget that many years ago when Amy and I announced on Christmas morning that we were going to be parents for the first time, my dad, who up until that time had been a chain smoker, responded by saying that by the time his first grandchild was born, he would have given up smoking.  In other words, the unhealthy habit that he was unwilling to give up for himself, he would willingly choose to lay down for his grandchild.  He wanted to be there for him.  That was unselfish parenting, or in this case, grand parenting.  So what are the weights that tend to hold you back?  Why not make the choice to move past your pain if not for yourself, then for your children.

No More Princesses Please

First off, I should qualify this rant by reminding you that I am the father of three boys.  I don’t have girls and assume it’s because God either saw me genetically inferior and had pity on me or just likes me better.  Ask any parent of both boys and girls and they will almost unanimously say that boys are easier to raise.  Having said that, I notice a particular syndrome with dads of girls that I don’t quite get.  They seem determined to raise their daughters to be their little princess.  Mind you, I don’t consider this a good thing. What do I mean by raising a “princess”?  Well it’s a female who seems to posses the combined traits of being rather self-absorbed, having a sense of entitlement and appearing totally helpless in most any situation besides navigating her way around a mall. 

 

How does this happen?  Well it seems to me that this princess syndrome is largely bestowed upon girls by their fathers.  This comes from a well-intentioned desire to take care of and protect their little angel from all danger, distress and harm.  For example, if my son forgets his to pack his lunch as he heads to school, has a flat tire on the way home from soccer practice, gets picked on by a neighborhood hooligan or finds himself in any number of simple life lesson situations, the parent typically takes some version of the “well you got yourself into this, you’ll figure something out” type of response.  But the parent of a princess rushes to her aid every time.  As a result, we see girls set up to fail or be highly frustrated in their dating relationships because, Oh my, not every guy has the understanding that he is to wait on this frail waif hand and foot as her daddy did throughout her growing up years.  Are all females helpless little princesses?  Fortunately no.  And some girls who were raised as princesses manage to grow up into solid, caring mature young women.  But some unfortunately, spend their whole lives in the misguided mindset that the world revolves around them. So parents, and especially dads, if you have a beautiful little cherub who is the center of your world, please don’t handicap them by pampering them to the point that they develop into a “princess”.  I and all the other fathers of boys who may one day fall for your little princess beg you!