"Shoot For the Moon, Even If You Miss You'll Land Among the Stars."
- Les Brown
There have been times when I've used this blog as tool of self-motivation. I've written about goals that I set forth to accomplish with hopes that, in fear of appearing a failure, I'd accomplish them. I've written about getting healthier by giving up sugar, about my goal to live a contented life by starting the Happiness Project and about all the things I planned on doing the summer of 2012. To be honest, I eat sweets like it's no body's business, I followed through with 3 or 4 months of the given outlines of the Happiness Project and I only went on 1 of 6 adventures I planned last year.
The outcome? I still want to eat healthier, I am happy, last summer was great and another one is just around the corner with new adventures waiting. Do I consider myself a failure because I didn't accomplish all my goals? Absolutely not. I consider myself better off for having made them in the first place because had I not made them, I never would have done the things I did end up doing.
There is one mission, however, that has been given to me that is non-negotiable. It began nearly eleven years ago this June. This mission, which I chose whole-heartily to accept, is where I find my entire purpose in life. The details of this mission weren't entirely clear to me when I accepted it and as I took it on its level of difficulty became clear. At times, throughout this mission, I felt fear, fear that it was beyond me, that I was far from qualified. I felt inadequate to perform the tasks involved. I felt I was a failure already with so many goals still to accomplish. Then, I realized, I was inadequate, I wasn't meant to fulfill this mission alone.
It is the mission of raising my five children. Not just raising them, for people raise chickens all the time, no problem. They are born small, you feed them and they become full grown. Anybody can raise a chicken or a child for that matter. My mission is to form the souls of my children to "do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with their God." (Micheas 6:8) so that they will grow into like-minded adults.
I have a long way to go. When I had one child run in crying because her brother 'hit her on her back' and another child angry that her sister 'wouldn't play with her,' I thought to myself, 'do my children love kindness?' And again, the only thoughts towards justice I've heard lately are along the lines of, "Finder's Keepers!" and "That isn't FAIR!" And do they seem to be walking humbly with God? HA! Is any child truly humble?
But the truth is, where my inadequacies come into play, God's grace suffices to fill in the gaps. In this I am entirely confident that my children will grow to retain the same great loves I am teaching them now: love for God, love for family, love for life itself, and love for truth. I believe that they will become what Christ called all of us to be, "wise as serpents, and innocent as doves." Are these lofty goals? Impossible? Not if my expectations of them remain high. I have seen first-hand that children will either grow up to our expectations or down to them, and so I plan on keeping them high.
The next 14 weeks we will be undertaking an intensive immersion of learning about and practicing the following virtues: faith, hope, charity, prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance. I will spend approximately two weeks on each virtue until they become part of the makeup of who we are as a family and as individuals. This will be our summer's spiritual adventure that will accompany all of the physical ones we will have together.
I plan on documenting our goals, and the means by which we put the virtues into practice. I am still fine-tuning the details so we will begin this Monday, May 13th. I pray for God's guidance in this mission, because in and of myself, I can do nothing.
I wish I wrote this on Saturday, National Star Wars day, so I could end by saying May the 4th be with you, but I will stick with gist of today's post and say simply, 'May the grace of God be with us all.' Good Night.
Gina.
