"The Ultimate Parent"

My mom's church (Grace Covenant Church in Huntersville) has an amazing women's ministry called Morning Grace on Tuesday and Thursday mornings... somewhere around 600 women come from week to week. This past semester they offered 16 classes between the two days and they lasted 12 weeks.

I had the privilege of taking my mom's class called "Charting a Course For Your Family's Future." (I figured I better take it and buy the book before it becomes a best seller and costs a lot more :)) For any of you who know my parents, you probably know they are very good at their roles and are terrific parents. So I figured that as I started this journey as a mom, I ought to learn from the best.

The class was broken into 8 sections with an array of principles and hands-on, practical tips for parenting. It is designed to help you develop a strategic plan for your parenting so that you can be purposeful and on a track towards your goals rather than aimlessly approaching parenting as it happens circumstantially from day to day. We developed personal mission statements, created a family purpose statement, set goals and evaluated our health, personalities, giftings, etc. so that we can continue to improve and work as a family team.

Here are a few of the takeaways and ideas that were generated as a result of the course:
1. Pray for the fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control) and for submission, servanthood and stewardship to be developed in each child we have (daily ideally).
2. Face my fears - I need to stop focusing so much on hoping certain things don't happen and instead walking through the fear and determining what I will do if ______. As a complementary point, I was also reminded that Titus (as with any other children we have) is not mine -- he is the Lord's so I need to remember my role as caretaker and steward and not as being the one ultimately in control.
3. I would like to institute some form of regular family time that would incorporate learning and praying together (to include discipleship, oral presentations, reading texts, etc.)
4. I hope to teach the importance and joy in giving by incorporating it in everyday life and holiday time periods -- and to do it in a variety of ways to expose the kids to lots of different opportunities and venues.
5. Building teamwork. I'll confess when one of the girls in the class brought this up as a priority, I didn't get it, but over time I've become more and more convinced of the importance of doing this. I want our family to act and feel like a team -- that we would be there for each other -- fighting for each other, helping each other, caring for each other -- and this must be consciously pursued. I'd like to see us do family runs or triathlons (working to improve family times from year to year by helping each other achieve goals) and perhaps start a family business to practice working together and along the way learn various business and financial principles.
6. Grading ourselves each year. This sounds like overkill I'm sure, but Graham and I have decided to rate ourselves individually and as a family at the beginning of each year in all areas of health (emotional, intellectual, physical, spiritual, relational and financial). We've broken this down further into sub-areas and we will pick our weakest 12 areas and spend one month working on each one throughout the year. Admittedly, when we have more children that are older, this may no longer be realistic, but we'd like to do it as long as we can.
7. Starting a Clark Family Day, where we celebrate being a family. We're planning to do this the first Saturday of March and there are several components that will be incorporated each year, but different activities. This came out of our dreaming about a "perfect day" as a family (one of the exercises in the class).

So while I am not the "ultimate parent" (and probably never will be), I do have a better sense of purpose and some plans for intentional parenting that I didn't have before -- so here goes nothing!

For anyone who actually reads this blog and is on the great adventure of parenting (or will be soon), I do highly recommend this class. My mom is now reworking the class to be more of a conference style so that couples can do this together. It helps you set a solid foundation in the Lord and gives lots of practical ways to navigate the calm and stormy waters of life that you and your children will go through over the years. This class was such a blessing to me -- thanks, Mom!