Spending Time With Family
January 29, 2020
As a stay at home parent, this is actually tough for me. Yes, I am here with my family. But it is constantly. I am constantly here and I think a lot about the tasks that have to be done. I had heard somewhere that at the end of your life when you are thinking about what you have accomplished, are you going to think about your kids, your legacy, your family? Or are you going to think about the laundry being done, the house looking a certain way, the baseboards being cleaned. I honestly don’t know which one I would think about. LOL, of course, I would think about my kids and how they are contributing to the world as adults. And if I am lucky, I will have a baseball team of grandkids who are cute, cuddly, and amazing AND I will get to load with them with cookies, brownies, and sugar juice and send them back to their parents. Just kidding, I would assume with everything I know about those “foods” I would want my grandkids to live a long healthy vibrant life and would not spoil them in that way. ANYWAYS, at the end of my life, being who I am, I would likely think “did I do the best I could do?”. For me, the best might actually include housework. Not specifically laundry or cleaning baseboards, but that as I used to be a packrat and had lived in my house for over 10 years before my friend told me to clean the ceiling…I think I would look back at how much I learned about housework, not keeping things that give me joy, and the Biblical teaching that if I have 2 of something, I should give one away to someone in need of that thing. I actually would be proud of this large learning curve. No, I am not Mrs. Meyer and even at my best, there were people in my life who continued to find things not up to their standards. “Those army men are in your lego container. They were there before we started playing. They were already in the bin”. Yup…. I get it…Feel free to take up the burden of putting all the toys back into the rightful place. But spending intentional quality family time? That is something you have to think about. That is something you have to be intentional on. I don’t care if you work full time, overtime, part-time, or stay at home. It doesn’t even fully matter if you are divorced and see your kids only once a month. At the end of the day, if you are not intentional with your time that you are spending with your family it will likely influence you. Whether it be broken relationships, broken self-worth, broken self-esteem, or broken in other ways, the amount of intentional quality time you spend matters. Use the 30 Day Challenger to begin to take control of this aspect of your life. Begin setting goals such as:
I will find a variety of spouse questions and ask a different ‘conversation starter’ one every day for 30 days.
I will know one thing that my child enjoys.
I will do at least 1 family activity a week.
I will look a person in the eye for at least 1 full second and tell them ‘I love you’.
These little differences in your time and attention will leave a huge impact on your family. The 30-Day Challenger can aid you in getting specific and timely on these goals.
Until next time,
Heather