Generous With Time: The Donut Rule
It’s November. It’s November. It’s November! Can you believe it? This month, I’ve invited special guests to share each Monday about topics which are important to me, and topics which happen to correlate with chapters in When More is Not Enough. First up, I’d like you to meet Jen Weaver.
Adorable, right? You like her and you haven’t even met her. I knew you would. In her post, Jen shares how her family decided to cut out time wasters in their life. By creating a family crest, the Weavers are able to focus on things which are important to them.
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Half a donut a day. No more than once every other day. No exceptions.
Growing up in a large family, one-off rules formed life’s daily existence. No doubt equal parts discipline and economics in their institution. Even with the best of intentions from awesome parents, my childhood overflowed with rules. Regulations on food, behavior, speech, chores, homework, technology, you name it. Not only did these lists require time to learn and remember, our family also invested precious hours enforcing, correcting, changing, tweaking, and re-establishing said guidelines. So many decrees that I attribute my superior memory to the plethora of guidelines I learned and employed as a child.
As Jared and I started talking about how-to raise our kids, one common theme kept rising to the top of the list. We want to guard our time, especially the time spent in instruction. Proverbs 22:6 says to “train a child in the way he should go.” Not necessarily how he should behave but the way he is to direct his life. We want to be intentional in our instruction so that our time spent together guides them toward the heart of Jesus. And as any parent knows, we’ll lose so much time fighting little battles if we’re not careful.
How to act in public.
Cleaning the table.
Not hitting.
And yes, whether I ate half a jelly donut yesterday or if it really was two days earlier.
To preempt some of these time-wasters, we’ve invested several months prayerfully developing our Family Crest—characteristics and guiding principles for the way we choose to operate as a family.
Here’s the checklist we used in determining what to include in our crest:
Guiding principles that apply to a variety of situations, not necessarily specific rules like “we clean our rooms.”
Limit the crest to 6-8 key points.
The elements in our crest are opportunities for instruction, discussion, and future additions.
Here’s our family commitment:
Our relationships with God are most important.
Every person is valuable and is to be treated with consideration, honesty, and forgiveness.
We fill our hearts with good things so that good things will come out in our thoughts, words, and actions.
We honor authority and walk under authority.
We all contribute to making our home clean, peaceful, and enjoyable.
Delayed obedience is disobedience.
As parents, we’re committed to protecting our family time against unnecessary rules. We choose to spend these moments together—the fun, the discipline, and the instruction—guiding the way for our children to form healthy relationships with God and with others. I’m sure we’ll have practical rules to enforce along the way, but prominence is given to the way we live as guidelines for what we do, instead of the other way around. Even if that means my son eats a whole chocolate sprinkled masterpiece in one sitting.
What about you? Do you have a family crest? Have you ever thought about creating one? What would you include on your crest?
Jen Weaver is a communicator, both through the written word, public speaking, and teaching. Married to her best friend Jared, she’s passionate about helping people achieve freedom and fullness in everyday life. You’ll find her blogging over at TheJenWeaver.com or connect on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
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The Goodreads giveaway is still going strong! Click over to enter and win one of five free copies of When More is Not Enough.
Goodreads Book Giveaway
When More is Not Enough – How to Stop Giving Your Kids What They Want and Give Them What They Need
by Amy L. Sullivan
Giveaway ends November 14, 2014.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
