High Hopes

We all have high hopes for our future, especially for our kid’s future.

We all want the “perfect” family and we even try to fake it to the world through social media.

But the truth is, we are not perfect. Our lives are filled with imperfect moments. But even in the midst of the craziness of life as a parent, I think it’s very important to think about the future.

It’s good to think and imagine the end. I know that it sounds kind of ominous. But think about it this way, what do you want your family to look like or feel like 10-15 years from now?

We all have our own story and our own past. In fact, we are the product of someone else’s parenting or lack thereof.

But now as a parent yourself, you get the extraordinary and incredible pressure of creating your own family culture for your kids . . .

Three years ago we started our parenting journey. Justin and I decided to make some informal goals for our family (these are not written anywhere). We like to revisit them every time an important decision comes up in our lives.

Now please hear me when I say that our family is not perfect, and there are a lot of things that we have not gone through and things that we have yet to learn. But this unwritten goal has helped us make decisions that will help our family in the end.

This whole idea started with me researching a baby dedication event for our church. One of the “homework assignments” for the parents was to write down what they would like their kids to become. We are not talking about the job we want them to have, but more about the character/virtues that we wanted our kids to have.

This whole notion got me thinking about what we have to do, as parents, to help our family win in the future.

So we asked ourselves these three things:

What kind of parent do we want our kids to have?

What kind of relationship do we want between our kids?

How do we want our family to react in times of stress?

These three things, Justin and I knew we can work on! Three things, that even in the midst of the imperfection of everyday life, we can still learn and teach our kids. I wanted to create and maintain a culture for our family.

• We want to be the kind of parents who will listen, not judge, and not freak out at every little thing.
• We want to be the kind of parents who teach our boys how to deal with fear in a healthy way.
• We want to be parents who will love no matter WHAT.
• We want to be parents who do not “fight” in front of the kids.
• We want to be parents who express our love to each other at home.
• We want our kids to have the best relationships. Although we do not have complete control over this, we want to make sure we always encourage, love and respect each other.
• And lastly, we try to help our kids to trust God no matter how hopeless a situation may seem.

These things we continue to work on for our family. We have realized that when we make decisions based on these three things, we work towards a family that 10-15 years from now will love each other, will trust each other and will trust God no matter what.

Have you set up goals that will help you imagine the end?

Have you set up goals that will help you imagine the end?