My wife commented yesterday that she needs to buy a new calendar to hang on our wall because she likes to see life and our events a month at a time. The kids had no idea why. Why would it end yesterday with nothing for today. Our talking kids are 7, 5, and 3 so any explanation we gave them did not really make sense to them. Days of the year are things that adults pay attention to. Kids only care about what is happening in the days. Notches on the board are only things to show your height dominance. Time is forever when you are 3. For those of us who are ruled by our calendar, today marks the new year.
This is as neutral a comment as they come, if a comment could be neutral. Some plan their whole years based on today. Some don’t even notice it. For me, I use it as forced reflection. I am still relatively young though I do tend to think in multi-year segments. Doing something hard that I won’t enjoy for 2-3 years in order to see some gains does not seem daunting to me. 5-7 years is starting to stretch things out. A decade will often feel like yesterday. My oldest will be having kids of his own before I know it. I have to make myself pay attention and not let time slip past.
We have some milestones in our lives this year. My wife turns over a new decade this year. Our marriage hits its first decade. We will have half a decade of kids with us as well, Lord willing as we have our first set of Irish twins due this year.
I am blessed, and I know it.
I am looking forward to the year ahead even though I know there will be hard things to go along with these great blessings.
While getting some schoolwork done today, a few phrases popped into my head that I probably heard for the first time a decade ago. I know they come from books, and I know I heard them in keynote speeches, yet you’ll have to take them from my head because I can’t remember the citation.
“Those who think they can and those who think they can’t are both right.”
And
“Those who fight for their limitations can keep them.”
One thing that I really appreciate about my father is his desire to get better. Now, he has never been a small person. He was a stout baby, a muscular teen, and the joke he used to tell was that he got pregnant with my mom, but she had the baby, and he didn’t. A decade ago, he challenged himself to lose 50 pounds before his 50th birthday. He missed it be 1 day. This last year, he turned 60 and decided to challenge himself to run a marathon. I have no idea how many miles he ran this year, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was several thousand. He is now in the low teens of body fat percentage. No one still could accuse him of being small.
This is just one aspect of his life and one way that he has modeled this for me growing up. I appreciate him for this. He showed me that there is no need to whine about the circumstances in your life. Accept them as they come from God and do what you can to do better and be better.
Looking at my own kids, I see myself and my wife in them: our strengths and our weaknesses. God has clearly given them to us to help them mature in Christ. This is perhaps my largest encouragement to work on myself. I need to grow in many areas in my life, because I need to show my kids how to overcome these things in their lives.
For myself for this year, I am setting some daily production goals and fitness goals that are super measurable and with some planning, are easy to do or easy not to do. I also know that if I hit 50% for the year, my life will look different next year. To accomplish the goals though, I will have to fight real physical limitations that I have, and my pride because of how small I have to start. I am going to be tired and in pain this entire year. I don’t think that I am fighting God in this either. I say this because He clearly made me the way that I am and kept me here to this day. I could be accuse of kicking against His plans for me or not being content with how He made me. It is not a matter of pride that I want to do these things for this year. It is a matter of usefulness and impact that I am working on these goals. I am working the way that I am through His grace and for His glory.
A challenge to any parent reading this, do not accept your limitations or deficiencies. Whatever you accept about yourself, you are telling your kid that it is ok for them to be like you. I teach math and writing, two skills that at least one of them is hard to most everyone. Parents come to me often asking for advice on how to help their child in my classes. At the start of most of these conversations, the parent will say, “I was bad at math” or “I was bad at writing.” Every time, I want to ask them, “Great! How did you get over it? Because I am sure that your kid has the same problems that you had.” While I think it is true, I know this would not be helpful because if they struggled with it, then no one helped them get out of it when they were in school. If someone had helped them, they would not say that they were bad at it. For most people, the need to know how to do matrices or to use the quadratic goes away after high school so there was little reason for them to struggle through learning it. Commas rules are annoying and don’t get me started on citations rules that change yearly.
This is just one small thing though. What about beyond the academic? Does your child struggle with self-control? How did you learn self-control? Is your kid emotional? How did you deal with it? Or anxious, depressed, angry, lazy, or whatever. The list of sin goes on. Generational sin is a thing. It is linked to idolatry in Exodus 20:5 and 34:7. Sin or not though, whatever your shortcoming is, if you don’t fight and defeat it, then your kid is going to be fighting the same battle that you are. If you are able to defeat it, then you can arm your children with the weapons that you used, weapons that are effective for the fight. You have to start with yourself though. Don’t pass your deficiencies onto your children.
With this new year, what limitations or deficiencies are you going to be fighting and growing through in order to make your life better and the lives of those who are around you? Don’t only focus on your strengths. Work to become a well-rounded person. Start this new year by taking dominion of your life. Work hard to see how God blesses your efforts.
Good and encouraging words. Thank you.