Orange Parents

Photo by Mark Wilson

There is an age-old debate
that affects how I see myself.

Some say I am
broken
damaged
faulty

So I am stuck.

While others say I am
unique
special
gifted

So I can do anything.

And the controversy sometimes gets heated
While parents get confused.
No one is sure how to move ahead.

Some leaders say those who work at building children’s self-esteem are raising kids who will exhibit a lifestyle of entitlement and egotism.

Other specialists say those who talk about children being innately bad are raising a generation that feels inferior and insignificant.

Every expert has an opinion. Many promote their agenda by pushing the opposing opinion to the extreme.

It happens in
education
politics
economics
and even
religion.

Cults and heresies start by teaching what’s true, then push a truth to an extreme while separating it from other balancing truths.

We love to analyze, scrutinize, and dissect truths until they are twisted and some cases, lifeless.

By the time Jesus showed up in culture,
the Pharisees had systematically distorted what was timeless into a code of behavior for their generation.

So Jesus very carefully picked up the pieces of broken truth
and neatly re-arranged them with love in the center.

Then everything made sense.

Those who teach have a critical responsibility to present God’s truth in a way that
captures the imagination
engages the mind
appeals to the heart

It’s less about information and
more about transformation.

Christianity is a journey where you move in and out of recurring insights that collectively form a higher view of the world.

What are those insights?
They begin with understanding the
Design
Identity
Connection
of who you are.

You can add
Faith
Transformation
Truth
as you continue to discover how to live.

You will soon realize that the
Christian faith is paradoxical.

God is love.
But God is just.

We live by faith, not works.
But faith without works is dead.

I am broken.
But I am redeemable.
Both are true at the same time.

It is important to discover my untapped uniqueness in the light of my evident imperfection.
Understanding them both is essential for my future.

Who I believe I am
will affect who I become.

God designed you with an intrinsic sense of worth and significance.

According to what God has said about you
You are fearfully and wonderfully made.
You are His workmanship created to do good works.
You are the light of the world, the salt of the earth.

So it’s your move.

To discover your
physical talents
spiritual gifts
personality traits

It’s ok to believe that you have been made in a remarkable way.

It’s healthy to figure out how to tap into your strengths
so you can live a better story.

It’s wise to discover
and to encourage others to discover.

Discovery is a shared experience,
and a personal process at the same time.

If your job as a parent is to
“help your child move in a positive or forward direction,”
then remember that means you often lead them one step at a time.

So here’s the question for today: In what ways do you help your children discover who they really are and who they are becoming? How can you help them discover a healthy sense of identity?

Photograph by Reggie Joiner

I want to keep the wonder discussion going for a few days. It just feels like it is too important. Monday, I asked some of our staff at Orange the question, “How do you turn the Wonder dial either down or up in the heart of child?” I think they had some interesting insights.

• Injecting fear and ridicule can turn the wonder dial down.

Whenever you create a climate where kids are afraid of being wrong or rejected, it potentially affects how they develop a sense of wonder. Wonder is cultivated in an environment that feels non-threatening and safe.

• Adults who are too egotistical or proud can quench wonder.

It’s the cycle of life. Kids who grow up being too afraid of what others think become adults who hide behind a false sense of pride. This can result in adults who feel the need to always have the answer to every question and who will tend not to model wonder in front of others. Every kid should occasionally hear a parent say, “I’m not sure.” (That’s also something I would love to hear in a political campaign debate.)

• Asking strategic questions instead of just giving information can stir wonder.

How we frame questions are so important. “What do you think?” “How does that work?” “Can you help me figure this out?”

• Giving kids a hands-on experience can affect their wonder instincts.

One leader described the process of watching her dad mix ink as a printer. He would never just show her what to do. Instead he would stop and ask the question, “What do you think we should do here?” Over time, she was drawn into the process and learned because she had a hands-on opportunity.

• Rearranging schedules can affect wonder.

There seems to be a correlation between busy, rushed lives and the decline of wonder. Wonder requires space, margin and a slower pace. Creating the right rhythm to your day, week, and month can allow time to actually do things that inspire wonder. Reading, hiking, telling stories, music, art, photography, exploring nature, and yes, going to church can affect your wonder instinct. But they all take time.

So keep the ideas coming. What are some specific ways you think leaders and parents turn the wonder dial up or down?

Lost Community in Pleasant Grove - Photo by Reggie Joiner

It’s hard for us to imagine the physical and emotional devastation one storm can cause.  But just for a minute, consider a boy named Kenontai. He is only fourteen years old. Last Wednesday, he was just one of hundreds that arrived at Rosedale, a community in Tuscaloosa, minutes after a category 5 tornado ripped through the area.

Almost every home was reduced to rubble in seconds. Vehicles were tossed around like toys and riddled with shrapnel. When Kenontai entered the disaster zone looking for his grandmother, he had no choice but to respond like an adult and move debris looking for survivors. That’s when he discovered an infant who had somehow been caught in the wrath of the storm. As he picked up the small body, it soon became obvious that the child had not survived.

During the hours that followed, things were so chaotic that emergency personnel in hospitals had to mark a check on the arms of kids whose parents had survived and an X on the arms of kids whose parents were still missing.

We had driven to Alabama to see how some friends in various parts of the state were coping with the destruction. During our first morning in Tuscaloosa, I heard the story of Kenontai. I think it was the first time the tragic events of April 27th became real to me. That’s when it occurred to me there were thousands of children who had been traumatized by the effects of this violent storm.

Later that afternoon, as we were looking across a destroyed neighborhood in Pleasant Grove, a pickup truck carrying a family who had lived there drove past us. There was an elementary age girl staring out of the window with a glazed-over look of disbelief. Everything was gone. Every tree had been uprooted, stripped of branches, or snapped in two. Only the remnants of a few houses remained. Everything else was rubble. I am sure she was trying to remember her neighborhood the way it had been, instead of the strange wasteland it had become.

If you stopped long enough to focus your eyes on the debris, you could pick up the reminders that there had been a lot of families with young children living in these homes. Plastic toys, stuffed animals, highchairs, coloring books, car seats, and broken baby food jars surfaced everywhere.

Most of us never imagine that our children would face the kind of heartbreak or tragedy that an unexpected storm can bring. But it is just another reminder that so much in life is out of our control. We can’t prevent storms. We can only prepare and respond to the best of our ability to whatever blows through our lives. But it in that moment, we have the opportunity to make a renewed discovery about what is really important. Sometimes it’s easier to see what really matters, when life reduces everything to rubble.

Everywhere we looked in Alabama this week, there were the signs of enduring faith in God, intense love for each other, and a determination to help people rebuild their lives. So I’d like to remind you to pray for Kenontai and the children of Alabama this week. While you pray, hold your kids a little closer, and remember what really matters.

A while ago something painful happened to our family.  It hurt. It was a betrayal. It was out of our control and it was someone else’s fault.  It left our whole family reeling. The details of what happened are not important, but what is continuing to happen in us as a result is very important.

As we were navigating the days and months ahead, Gary and I had one primary concern and that was for our children. Each of my four children was affected in a different way. I watched them struggle with anger and betrayal. I knew that how they came through this would forever change them.

My heart broke to think that some one’s poor choices could forever damage the hearts of my children. I struggled with this and cried many tears. I prayed that God would protect the hearts of my children and help them come through this without bitterness.

I asked everyone I trusted for advice. I wanted to know how I could help them navigate this painful situation and come out on the other side whole? How should I guide them?

One day I was sitting on the bed of one of my daughters. She was unloading her anger…I could see she was building walls. I knew these walls would be damaging. In that moment I knew the answer.

Forgiveness.

The only possible way to protect the hearts of my children was to guide them towards forgiveness.

Not a quick, I’m sorry.

This would take some time…some work.

This would require an I accept you, I care about you, and I love you in spite of what you’ve done, kind of forgiveness.

It would require an ability to put aside your desire to make someone else pay.

And to open your arms wide and give them a chance they don’t deserve.

And a realization that none of us are perfect.

We all need forgiveness.

It’s the only possible way to walk through pain and be changed for the better.

Forgiveness.

Your children will be treated unfairly. They will be lied to. They will be betrayed. There is no question that someone will hurt your children someday in someway.

The question is how will they survive? Choosing to forgive makes it possible for them to emerge on the other side with a heart that is whole.

If you want to invest in the future emotional health of your children…teach them to forgive.

I’m a baseball fan so I’m excited about Opening Day, but I didn’t want to let the NCAA basketball finals pass without noting that this is the first NCAA Final Four in almost a century without the presence of legendary UCLA coach John Wooden.

Wooden passed away at the age of 99 last summer, so when Butler and UConn take the floor for the 2011 title game, it will be the end of an era.

Anyone who ever played for him would tell you that Coach Wooden was more about building character than he was about winning basketball games, although he did both pretty well. His teams won ten championships during a 12-year period, the final one in his last year of coaching in 1975. (No other coach has won more than four men’s titles compared to his ten.) The Sporting News named him “the greatest coach of all time.”

He was famous for his “pyramid of success,” fifteen different elements like “competitive greatness” and “teamwork.” But Wooden said one quality was more important than all the rest and made the rest possible: unselfish humility.

Wooden would tell his players: “Talent is God-given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful.”

Be humble. Be grateful. Be careful.

Sounds like he had the balance between ego and humility down pretty well.

Fast Company did a survey about the nation’s most successful CEOs, asking readers to rank these leaders’ most evident leadership qualities. “Unselfishness” didn’t rank very well. It was dead last on the list after ideas like “ruthless ambition” and “passionate work ethic.”

In their analysis of this study, the authors of Egonomics echo Wooden’s sentiment that unselfish humility is the foundational quality for every other step to success. “As a trait, humility is the point of equilibrium between two much ego and not enough.” It’s the proper tension between a discouragingly low self-esteem and exceedingly high self-confidence.

As a book written for the business world, Egonomics makes a good point: “As an indispensable trait of great leadership, humility must make its way past the pulpit of Sunday sermons and into the cubicles and boardrooms. Humility should be our first reflex…”

Of course, on our children’s playgrounds, humility looks a lot different than it does in a workplace, a church or even a college basketball court. As we explore this idea of humility with our kids, we show them humility doesn’t mean getting stepped on or kicked around or looking down on themselves. “Humility is not the equivalent of being weak, ignored, indifferent, boring or a pushover,” according to the book. “Humility must include confidence, ambition, and willpower.”

That’s why we’ve chosen to define humility as “putting others first by giving up what you think you deserve.” That’s a scenario every kid can imagine. And it comes right out of the Bible: “Do nothing out of selfish ambition of vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves” (Philippians 2:3).

Coach Wooden described it this way:

“Don’t try to be better than someone else. Always try to be the best you can be.”

If you’re interested in reading more about Egonomics, search “egonomics white paper” on the Internet or purchase Egonomics: What Makes Ego Our Greatest Asset (or Most Expensive Liability) by David Marcum and Steven Smith.

For practical ways to teach your children the virtue of Humility, read the newsfeed and watch this month’s Virtue Preview Video below.

VIRTUE VIDEO: HUMILITY (April 2011) from Orange on Vimeo.

Mike Jeffries works with Reggie Joiner and reThink on publishing initiatives and creative strategies. He’s also serves as an associate
pastor at a fast-growing multicultural church in South Florida, specializing in global missions and communications.

Confession: I lay awake at night and worry about my kids. It’s true. I know that worry is a waste of time. I know that worry shows a lack of faith. But sometimes…I worry.

I have a child about to graduate from high school and is still undecided about where she wants to go to college. I worry. What if she chooses a college that is out of state and I don’t get to see her every weekend? Or what if she doesn’t make friends? Or worse, what if her new friends aren’t good for her? College campuses are dangerous!  You see? I worry!

I could make a similar list for each of my kids. What if they fall and break their arm? What if they don’t pass that test? What if they are hurt? Mistreated? Taken advantage of?

There’s a part of me that would like to create this safe, protected, and controlled environment for my kids…to put locks on all of the doors and keep the bad out. I know this wouldn’t be best for them, but it sure is a tempting thought.

Worry won’t get you very far.

It takes courage to be a good parent.

Next time you need a little courage, try this:

Seek a new perspective.

There are worries in every stage of life. The first time you leave your baby with a sitter is scary. But there are parents who are further down the road than you are. They’ve been there. They’ve seen how things turn out.  They can give you a new point of view. Ask them.

Allow children to learn from their mistakes.

Would I let my child touch a hot stove? No Way! Did my kids scrape their knees when learning to ride their bike? Absolutely. The great things in life come with some risk. There are lessons that your child needs to learn by overcoming obstacles. And when we don’t allow them to face the tough stuff, we cripple them.

Acknowledge that you are not in control.

This is a tough one for me. Sometimes I would like to be in control. After all, my way is obviously the best way! But I can’t keep all drunk drivers off the road. I can’t stop sickness. I can’t build a fence high enough to protect them. I am not able to control every circumstance.

It takes courage to be a good parent. Sometimes I need the advice of those who’ve been there. Sometimes I need to help my child learn all that they can from the worrisome circumstances. And sometimes, I just need to remember to give my fears to one who holds the whole world in His hands.

We are honored to have Kendra Fleming, a dear friend, guest post on our blog. Kendra is the Director of Children’s Ministry at North Point Community Church in Alpharetta, GA. She lives in Cumming, GA with her husband Gary and their four children, Jessica (19), Catherine(18), Jack(15), and Emily(13).