Five Core Values That Have Shaped My Home
While every home is different, here are five core values that can shape your household.
To recap, over the past two weeks, we’ve looked at what it means to be a real “Breadcaster” and build our life around investing in relationships rather than projects, accomplishments, and temporary pursuits.
Rather than following the path of the preacher of Ecclesiastes, we've been looking at the example set by Jesus and how he cast his bread and invested in seven key relationships.
We started with our relationship with God, and today, we’re wrapping up our posts on family. From firsthand experience, I can attest that marriage and raising a family are wonderful, sacred joys. But they also reflect a deeper union to come.
Thus, the goal of casting our bread into our family isn’t to create a mini kingdom where our home becomes our castle and we care little for those outside. Rather, the goal is to look at the bread we’ve been given, recognize our benefits and limitations, and do all we can to cast it into the lives of family members as Christ intended.
But how do you do this?
The Key Is To Clarify Your Values
Several years ago, during a tough season in our lives, Janan and I developed five core values that are the foundation for our home. Every morning before I head out the door to work, my kids recite these five statements, complete with hand motions.
- Be Strong (Muscle flex)
- Be Humble (Clamping a free hand over the flexed muscle)
- Be Generous (Hands extended out)
- Be Thankful (Hand moving from mouth to out)
- Be Abundant (Making a big circle with both hands)
Life is hard. More than ever, we need kids who possess the strength and courage to press through tough times. But the right kind of strength. This is where humility comes into play.
Humility is strength under control. It’s knowing we could do harm to a person and choosing to treat them with love. It’s being gracious when our natural response is to lash out in anger.
Generosity is one of my favorites. We live in a world of tightwads who are quick to pursue their own interests at the cost of others. But I love teaching our kids to be generous, and to my surprise, they like it as well!
Thankfulness is one we work on every day. Even as adults, it’s easy to let our gripes about life serve as the foundation for our relationships with others. We have someone over to our house and spend the evening cutting others down, so we build this flawed sense of connection. It’s a toxic way to live. Instead, we want our kids to realize how fortunate they are to live where they do and have the blessings they have.
Abundance flows from our understanding of God. We serve an abundant God who has lavished his blessings on us. This means we’re not going to wake up each day with an “others must lose so I can win” mentality. Practically speaking, this means we don’t want our kids grabbing the last cookie off the tray.
