Focus your priorities on what matters most.
Most parents can’t give their children a lavish inheritance, but every parent will leave a personal legacy.
With the excess that surrounds most of us, a lot of families get sidetracked from what really matters. We become so preoccupied with giving kids an inheritance that we forget the significance of leaving a legacy. Sometimes I just have to be reminded that what I give to my children or what I do for my children is not as important as what I leave in them. Isn’t it interesting how “stuff” can distract us from what is really valuable? Too often, parents believe the end goal is to make their kids happy. There are moments when I will buy anything, do anything, and go anywhere if it will just make my kids happy…
Whenever we define a child’s happiness as our ultimate goal, we settle for something far less significant than what God has designed for them or what He has designed them for..
It really doesn’t matter what our kids know if they don’t know what really matters. It would be heartbreaking if your children enjoy the benefits and the prosperity of a better lifestyle, and become experientially rich but never grow relationally and spiritually.
Excerpts from Parenting Beyond your Capacity, p82-p83
What are some things that cause us as parents to lose our focus on what really matters?
You know I read this in your book (highlighted it too), but it’s funny how quickly you forget it. Especially when you have financial issues hitting you in the face (summer day care, car repair, vet bills-sick little doggie)!
I really needed this post today! Thank you for reminding me again of what matters most! Think we’ll read a good book tonight (my daughter and me)!
This is SO important to reiterate over and over and over. It is easy to get busy with “stuff”. Just one more playdate, one more park district class or even one more church event.
Although life is event oriented it is what happens before and after the events that really matters.
Well said.
When talking with parents, I hear a similar thread over and over in different conversations; the word is COMPETITION. The press to give their kid “what they are going to need” to have the best chance at a “successful” future drives them to pay for high dollar sports camps, expensive extra curricular classes, and keeps them spending money on the latest tech stuff so they will fit in with the “right” crowd. The fight the parents are in to keep their kids in the top of their reading levels, math levels and field days at school… as well as their social circles, creates an environment where there is little time left to keep God as the main thing in their lives. The pressure can be tremendous. I have often thought that the “peer pressure” talks should be given first and foremost to the parents, just to give the kids a fighting chance. And don’t get me wrong, I am a fan of competition when it is applied in the correct form… just not at the cost of eliminating God as their greatest success life.