What is one thing that can be spent, not saved and never gotten back?

Time

We as humans on Planet Earth live in a linear fashion in regards to time. We have a start point, we move forward. There is no going back, there is no time travel back. Time: by it we measure and are measured. Once it is spent, it is gone. You cannot store it up. It is a commodity that can only be spent or misspent. Misspent time is wasted time.

How are you spending your time?

Parents, your time with your children is one of the most valuable commodities you will ever have. Your waking up, your meal times, your family times, your bed times all of these are precious, valuable and irreversible. Think back over your childhood. Inevitably, you have powerful memories for good or ill that happened at that time in your life and development. There is a clear link between emotionally healthy adults and emotionally healthy childhoods. Childhood is the most formative time that a human has.

We do not get to choose our parents. That is water under the bridge. Sadly, too many people are hung up by it and cannot make the transition to healthy parenting themselves. However, now, we do get to choose how we spend our time with our children. You do get to choose (regardless of amount or circumstance) if you will be successful with your time.

My’s wife, Julie’s view of her success as a parent (from one of her most read posts) :  

“I do not take it (raising you) lightly. This job–I have been given. I only have ONE chance to get it right–to be your mother. My job is to train you and to hide God’s Word in your heart is my priority. You are gifts that God choose to give me. I will never look back at this time in my life and say that I wish I had gone to lunch more with friends, gone to more ladies events, or wished that I had worked more. Never. I am thankful for this season. My family is my priority. If I raise children to honor The Lord and glorify Him, I have done my job. Teaching them to serve others for the cause of Christ and be productive members of society…That is my success.”

How are you measuring success? Far too often, we are measuring success by the trap of comparison and the disillusionment of contrast. When we compare and contrast our lives and the lives of our children we measure their “successfulness”/our “successfulness” against others we set our family up for failure. This is both unfair to you and your kids. You will miss the uniqueness of your own child by holding them up against another. Most of you will not raise an Olympian, a movie star, a professional athlete or a Rhodes scholar. You will, however, raise either successfully or unsuccessfuly the child(ren) God gave you.

The One Thing You Can’t Afford to Miss on: Training

How are you training your children? Are you accidental, occasional or intentional.

Accidental: You cannot “wish” your children into well-trained young adults. Hoping to do so is a haphazard and careless approach. Allowing your children unrestricted access to the internet, friends, or television all can and will yield troublesome if not disastrous results. You are your children’s filter. I am amazed at what parent’s allow their children to be exposed to and then take them to church on Sunday, all-the-while, “hoping” for the best. Foolishness. This is the same as hoping for a “good accident” to occur. What you are really saying is “I choose to let others influence my children more than myself.”

Occasional: Good intentions do not make good results. Many parents struggle with being more intentional to train their children. They vacillate between times of decent instruction and times of no instruction. This may seem good, but what the parents are really reinforcing is (a) the inability to commitment, (b) laziness and selfishness, or (c) inconsistency. Children need consistency. Children need structure. Children need discipline. What you are really saying is “I choose to be influential in my child’s life when it suits me.”

Intentional: Good training requires good discipline. The problem is most of us are too comfortable to practice good discipline. Intentionality should not be viewed as rigid and lifeless but, rather as structured and developmental. Intentional parents engage their children in a committed, preserving fashion that enjoins the child on the learning, growing, and developing family experience. That which you do over and over again is training. What you are reallly saying is “I choose to be greatest influencer in my child’s life 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year!”

Thank you, mother of our children, friend, partner in raising our gifts from God, and successful mother, Julie. I honor you.

“Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it” Proverbs 22:6