What Motivates Me

I had had visions of catching up on my blogging while I was on my Christmas vacation, but alas life does not always go as planned. It seems that when I was child and a young adult that I had plenty of time during the Christmas holidays to do whatever I wanted, but now that I have been blessed with a wife and a family my priorities about what is really important have changed, like blogging for example.

Blogging is fun and it is a means and medium for me to express myself to whomever cares, but blogging loses its fun, its appealing luster compared to serving my family and meeting their needs. Please do not misunderstand me though, serving my family and meeting their needs is not always fun, clean, restful, exciting, a highly praised, and a painless affair, in fact most of the time it is quite the opposite. Therefore, the question you are now asking is if serving and meeting my family’s needs is mostly unentertaining, dirty, sleepless, boring, a thankless, and a painful affair then why am I doing it…what is my motivation?

I can sum up in one word what motivates me to serve my family even when it is so unpleasant, and it is the word, “love.” Some people are primarily motivated by duty, by fear of loss, by selfishness or by some other motivation, but it is the call of sacrificial love that motivates me. It is not to say that I am always motivated purely by love, I do fall short of the glory of pure love, but my relationship with my wife and girls is based upon a calling to and a covenant made in the name of love. Daily I strive to remember my God who showed me the true meaning and depth of His love, who humbled Himself as less than God to become a man in order to serve me instead of demanding His rightful service, who came to create peace between God and man, who was willing to suffer greatly and ultimately die as the just for the unjust. It is when I remember the meaning and the depth of the love of my God that I gain the power, the strength, the pure motivation to serve and meet the needs of my family, even when my family occasionally treats me unjustly or with disrespect. For the love which God has given to me conquers all evil even when evil has tortured, raped, and taken my life for in the end God justly resurrected His son back to life again and has promised to resurrect those who are so willing to follow His son down the same path of God’s pure love.

Leadership Styles in the Home

I have always had a heart for family life ever since I was a little child, being very sensitive to whether family members were connecting and relating to each other in love or whether those relational connections were impeded or broken. Thinking back in time on how my family was from when I was a child, in hindsight, I realize that my family was really a dysfunctional one. To sum it all up in a nutshell the foundational reason why my family was dysfunctional started and ended with the unstable relationship between my mom and dad which started off on the wrong foot and suffered much, so that by the time I reached the end of my junior year in high school my mom filed for a divorce from my dad.

With family as one of the high priorities of my heart I have taken my role and responsibility as husband and father very seriously. I am trying to take into account many factors such as the perceived shortcomings of my parents without overcompensating for them, take into account my family life as a child, take into account observations from the family life of others, and most of all directly apply the counsel of Almighty God. I have been trying to correct for the dysfunctional model I was raised with as a child and striving to live out a more functional and godly model within my home. A man needs all the help he can get to carry out this overwhelming role and responsibility, especially the help of the Divine Creator.

I have really been excited about one source of help that I am currently receiving and that is through Men’s Fraternity at my church. Men’s Fraternity provides men with the counsel, help, and encouragement that men need to have in order to be the man, the husband, and the father that men should be, and most of all it is seasoned with the salt of God’s counsel.

One of the subjects recently discussed within Men’s Fraternity was the four basic leadership styles within a home. They are:

1. Authoritative

2. Permissive

3. Neglectful

4. Authoritarian

Authoritative leadership is marked by lots of love and lots of discipline and instruction. Permissive leadership is marked by lots of love but low in discipline and instruction. Neglectful leadership is marked by a low level of love, discipline, and instruction, and Authoritarian leadership is marked by a low level of love but with lots of discipline and instruction. The interesting statistic about all four of these leadership styles is that the order of best to the worst style of leadership is the same order as given above with the Authoritative style the best and the Authoritarian style as the worst. Men tend to naturally express the Authoritarian style of leadership while women tend to naturally express the Permissive style, and interestingly a neglectful style with little love and little discipline and instruction is better than the Authoritarian style that has little love and lots of discipline and instruction. I muse that tyranny in any form is worse than anarchy because in anarchy at least the individual can somewhat express and live out freedom.

As a small child it seemed like my family was Authoritarian but by the time I became a teenager it was more the Neglectful style of leadership, and I can understand why since the relationship between my parents suffered to the point of divorce. In my home it is my goal to model the Authoritative style of leadership and at worst to err on the side of Permissiveness since I know that my natural inclination as a man is to be Authoritarian which would be the worst style possible to model for my family. There will be no tyrants in my home. I need to balance discipline and instruction with lots of love and depend upon the grace of God interceding upon my behalf for my shortcomings and failures as a man, a husband, and a father.

Thanksgiving Vacation Extended

I have really enjoyed my Thanksgiving vacation this week. I have tried to do my best to take advantage of every moment and opportunity to enjoy the company and love of my family. Originally, my vacation was going to last till the Friday after Thanksgiving Day and then I was going to have to work the weekend, but yesterday my family and I went to the playground at the local city park and while we were there I received a telephone call at home from work. When I got home yesterday afternoon I listened to the telephone message and I was told that I was not going to be needed at work this weekend after all because the work load was so light, so I received great news that my vacation was going to be extended by two more days! Thank you Lord for this grace!

Thanksgiving Vacation 2007

It really has been very busy at my place of work the latter half of 2007. Between work and home life I am exhausted at the end of the day and once I have a moment to sit still for about five minutes my eyelids drop on me and I fall fast asleep. This routine deeply bothers and concerns me because it adversely affects my family and my pursuit of happiness, and because by the time I get home to spend time with my wife and kids, who I love most, they get Daddy’s leftovers. I am really looking forward to enjoying my 2007 Thanksgiving holiday because I will not have my energy divided most of this week between work and leftovers for home, but I will have the opportunity to have all of my energy devoted to serving and building up my family.

It is going to be by the amazing grace of God that my family is going to live within this world because I am unable by my own power to meet all of their physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. To accomplish this goal I pray as often as I can to God to supply the needs that I am unable to meet by my own power. Lord, have mercy on me and my family! We need your Divine Hand of Blessing and Providence!

One of the Best Parts of My Day as a Dad

One of the best parts of my day as a Dad is when I come home from work and I open the door to my house and walk in the door. It is because I know from many prior days of experience that as soon as I open the door the faces of my oldest girl Zoë who is now four years old and my second oldest girl Hannah, who is now two years old, will light up like sunshine and overflow with excitement and glee as they hear and then see me come in through the door. My heart wells up with very deep emotions of love just seeing the full and unconditional love of my children for me as their faces beam with uncontained excitement and the biggest smiles on their little faces that their bodies will allow them to make. They run to me with their happy faces and call out as loud as they can, “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! It’s Daddy! Daddy is home!” I call their names out loud in return, “Zoë! Zoë! Zoë! Hannah! Hannah! Hannah!” Then they reach out with outstretched arms for me as I reach down to them and pick them up all the while continuing the chorus of calling out each other’s names. I’ll bounce them and hug them tightly and give them kisses on their cheeks and I always do my best to make sure to tell them that I love them saying, “I love you Zoë!” “I love you Hannah!” At this point they will tell me that they love me, tell me that they missed me, tell me something they thought was exciting about their day, or do some combination of the three. Since Hannah is two and her ability to communicate clearly is limited she will babble broken English and other words that sound like Chinese to me, but I gladly listen with joy and care even though I don’t fully understand. If it is important to my girls then it is important to me.

Every time I experience this moment with my girls I do my best to keep it secure and safe deep within the secret chambers of my heart and locked within the memories of my mind. This moment to me is even better than if I had played in a multi-million dollar powerball lottery and hit the winning numbers. My mind cannot help but think about the biblical story of the prodigal son and the loving father who at the sight of his returning son began to run with compassion to meet his lost son and then the father embraced, kissed his son, gave his son new clothes, a ring, and new shoes. Luke 15:11 – 32 If you are familiar with the story, you will know that when Jesus was telling this story He was referring to God as the Father, and us as the prodigal son, so when I see my children I can identify with God’s love for us as our Father. Because of my deep love for my children and the sacredness of this moment I have with them, I have gained insight as a daddy into the depth of God’s love for us.

However as joyous as this part of my day is as a Dad, I know that as my girls grow up they will one day cease to show the full and unconditional love like they do now. I can already see signs of this beginning to appear in my oldest girl Zoë. Her enthusiasm when I come home is not always as consistent or shown as brightly as she once did when she was Hannah’s age. I know as they mature they will begin to understand and see Daddy in new ways and our relationship will become far more complex. In the future depending on how our relationship develops they will be aware that they have the choice to not love me if they so choose. I just fervently pray to God that when my girls grow up and mature that if they choose the path of the prodigal son that God will show them grace and my girls will come to their senses like the prodigal son did and return back home to Daddy. If that day should come when they return home then I will be the one to light up like sunshine, overflow with excitement and glee, and call out their names once again like I did when they were my little girls.