Day 4: Be a Role Model
I think one of the hardest jobs in parenting is becoming a role model. Before we were parents, we might not have had to worry too much about days when we woke up on the wrong side of the bed, or were just in a funk for no reason. But, once we have children, every word, every action, every attitude is observed and learned by our little ones. It´s not enough just to hope and pray that our children become better people than us. We ourselves have to become the kind of people we want our children to be. We can´t ¨instruct them in the way they should go¨ unless we are already on that path. Otherwise it becomes hypocrisy.
Do you say ¨please¨ and ¨thank you¨ to your children? To your spouse? Do you eat your vegetables? Are you compassionate and considerate? Every day I personally see certain things in myself that I want to change so that I can be a better person for my children (current and future). I think when we have this mindset, motherhood becomes the best test of character and integrity that we could ever find.
Thankfully, this doesn´t mean we have to be perfect. When our good (yet imperfect) example is combined with seeking after God and praying fervently for our children, God will fill in the blanks. Even our failures are examples to our children in things like asking forgiveness and making restitution.
The easiest place to start is looking for opportunities to model good social behavior (please, thank you, excuse me, etc). There are hundreds of opportunities like these every day. (Right now we are learning ¨be nice¨ and ¨don´t hit!!!¨) But at the same time, we don´t just want polite children. We want children who are godly, emotionally secure, intelligent, etc. That´s where God will really start to take us apart and refine us.
Do your children see you reading the Word and spending time in prayer each day? The easiest way to start is with your kids. Just grab them, sit them down and spend 15 or 20 minutes reading a Bible story, talking about it and praying. My little one is one, so our time with God is simple and short, but it´s there. I don´t want her to remember a time when she didn´t hear God´s Word at home, where she didn´t pray, where she didn´t go to church, etc. Making time for myself to get away with God was a challenge for me. Good moments are times when our children are napping, at school or sleeping for the night. Even in those moments you will have many reasons not to spend time with God. But there also many reasons to be purposeful about that time and get it done. The most important reason, as a mother, is that without God we will never become the people we need to be in order to prepare our children.
A mother´s work is never finished, and the truth is that as a purposeful mother, we have to bring every word, every thought, every action, every attitude under Christ´s power. Honestly, this might be the single most important difference between merely having kids and being purposeful parents. It´s a high calling, with great rewards, both here on earth and in the next life.
I encourage you (and myself) to begin this and every day with prayer. Ask God to help you specifically in the areas where you are most likely to set a bad example normally. (Impatience, selfishness, lack of compassion, bad attitude, lack of gratitude, and the list goes on...) And when you fail, which you will sometimes, look at it as an opportunity to teach your children how to make ammends.
Let´s give our children a good example at home, so that while they still want to be like us, we will want them to be like us, too.
No comments:
Post a Comment