Fierce Love

I love my children with fierce love! This does not mean that I am blind to who they are. It simply means that I know them completely and love them anyway. I know who and what they are and I am committed to helping them become the best version of themselves. I look out for their best interest and teach them how to do that for themselves. I see their potential and consistently help them reach it. I know their faults, their shortcomings, their struggles, and their weaknesses, yet love them through it all. I teach them to recognize these traits in themselves and to use this recognition to make personal improvements. My love is not blind, but instead a fully aware love!

We are a family that loves to share! I say it all the time; we are a TMI (Too Much Information) family…and proud of it. When I was growing up, I always shared my TMI with my Mom...still do! Now that I am a parent, I am on the other end of these TMI moments with my kids and I consider it a blessing! I am aware they don’t share everything with me. In fact, I am certain nobody shares everything about themselves with anyone—other than God. I do believe that my kids share the important things, the fun things, the inconsequential things, and the silly things; which bonds us together in a way that I could never explain. Like me and my parents, my children know they can trust me with their secrets, their dreams, their anger, their frustrations, their disappointments, their struggles, and their fears. They know I will not betray them and that my only goal is to help them. They know I will not cast judgment on them or anyone they may be talking about. My job is to listen, share, guide, teach, coach, discipline, and pray...lots-and-lots of prayer.

I know my children are far from perfect, I see them everyday! My hope and prayer is that through our relationship they will learn to do life better than I have. I am preparing them to live better, love better, serve better, and be better than I could ever be. Isn't that what we all want for our kids, to have a better life than we did? We want them to learn from our mistakes so they are free to make different mistakes to learn and grow from.  To live their life to the fullness that God would have for them. “Train up a child in the way he should go, Even when he is old he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6).

Our Pastor recently finished a message series titled “Losing Your Marbles.” His focus was that each marble represents time we have with our children. In this case, one marble represents a week of time and it counts down from birth to high school graduation, or any significant goal or benchmark. The cornerstone scripture was Psalm 90:12, “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” It is sobering to think about this and face the fact that I have a 16 year old with less than 100 marbles! This message forces me to ask myself hard questions.

Am I being intentional with my time spent with my kids?

Am I teaching them all that God would have them learn from me?

Am I wasting my weeks with my kids being too busy to pour into them?

Am I doing enough, saying enough, loving enough, and teaching enough?

Whew, my head hurts! I think I’m going to lose my marbles! These are hard questions with some very uncomfortable answers. I encourage y’all to ask yourself these same questions and see how you feel you are doing.  It is always good to conduct a self-check to make sure we are hitting the marks that need to be hit, “making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.” (Ephesians 5:16).

*This picture may be a bit old, but these are my babies whom I love fiercely with my whole heart!