{"id":9015,"date":"2012-05-07T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-05-07T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites-stage.familylife.com\/flministries\/?p=9015"},"modified":"2012-05-07T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-05-07T00:00:00","slug":"the-choices-fathers-make","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/articles\/topics\/parenting\/essentials\/fathers\/the-choices-fathers-make\/","title":{"rendered":"The Choices Fathers Make"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"bsf_rt_marker\" fetchpriority=\"high\"><\/div><p style=\"padding-top: 25px\">\u201cDaddy, you wanna hear me count to 10 million?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Not a question I expected or necessarily even wanted to hear from my 5-year-old.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUm\u2026 well\u2026 no, not really,\u201d I was tempted to say (lovingly, of course).<\/p>\n<p>Maybe you\u2019re a mom and for you \u2026 \u00a0a question like this is precious!\u00a0But I\u2019m a dad, and after a long workday it\u2019s most definitely <em>not <\/em>precious.\u00a0\u201cLet\u2019s see, what\u2019s the best way to waste time tonight?\u00a0Ooh, I know, let\u2019s count to 10 million.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m pretty sure my 5-year-old can\u2019t even count to 10 million, much less do it fast enough to fit the jammed schedule I had planned for the evening:<\/p>\n<ul style=\"margin: 0 0 15px 1.5em\">\n<li style=\"padding-bottom: 8px\">Put on comfortable clothes?\u00a0Yep.<\/li>\n<li style=\"padding-bottom: 8px\">Eat dinner?\u00a0Uh-huh.<\/li>\n<li style=\"padding-bottom: 8px\">Watch playoff basketball game?\u00a0Now you\u2019re talking!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Count to 10 million?\u00a0Negative.\u00a0I could hear it already.\u00a0\u201cOne, two, three, four, five, um\u2026 wait, I\u2019m starting over.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Oh sure, you\u2019re probably more spiritual than me.\u00a0Cast the first stone if you must.\u00a0But most of you with young kids can relate.\u00a0They\u2019re growing fast and learning about things too big for them.\u00a0So they look to you for help sorting it all out.\u00a0You want to be a great parent, but time and energy run short.<\/p>\n<p>As I thought about the choice I had to make that night, God began to remind me of a few important things about spiritual life and parenting:<\/p>\n<p><strong>1. I needed to view this from my child\u2019s eyes, not just my own.<\/strong>\u00a0I joke that in my flesh I\u2019m not really interested in hearing my son count to 10 million.\u00a0But truthfully, from his perspective, that\u2019s a huge deal and an incredibly worthwhile investment of his time.\u00a0And for me to spend my evening doing that is even bigger to him.<\/p>\n<p>I agree with what Steve Farrar writes in his book, <em>Point Man<\/em>: \u201cQuality time comes at the most unusual moments.\u00a0You never know when it will happen.\u00a0It usually makes an appearance someplace in the realm of quantity time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Remembering to look through my child\u2019s eyes gets me out of \u201cquality time\u201d mode and into \u201cquantity time\u201d mode.\u00a0Don\u2019t ask me exactly how to measure \u201cquantity time,\u201d though I figure counting to ten million is a pretty good place to start.<\/p>\n<div class=\"fl-article-cta\"><div class=\"fl-article-cta-wrapper\"><a class='fl-article-cta-button' style='margin-top: 15px; visibility: visible; background-color: #f3bd48 !important;' target='_blank' href='https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/parenting\/' data-color-override='false' data-hover-color-override='false' data-hover-text-color-override='#fff'><span>Get together with your friends and learn the Art of Parenting.<i class='fa fas fa-child'><\/i><\/span> <\/a> <\/div> <\/div>\n<p><strong>2. I can\u2019t use up all my energy at work \u2026 I need to save some for when I get home.\u00a0<\/strong>I\u2019m as guilty as the next guy of putting every ounce of energy I can into my workday.\u00a0I\u2019ve got plenty of good reasons to do it, too.\u00a0The Bible tells me to work hard, \u201cas for the Lord rather than men\u201d (Colossians 3:23).\u00a0There\u2019s also the economy to think about.\u00a0I mean, who wants to be the guy found not working hard these days?<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, none of that makes any difference to my son.\u00a0All he knows is that I don\u2019t want to hear him count to 10 million.\u00a0For me, preserving some physical energy for when I get home actually helps me set the right pace for myself at work\u2014sort of a parenting twist on the \u201crender unto Caesar\u201d concept.\u00a0Render unto work the things due at work, but don\u2019t render everything you\u2019ve got every single day.<\/p>\n<p><strong>3. I needed to see this as an opportunity, not an interruption.\u00a0<\/strong>Spontaneous \u201cteachable moments\u201d are the very essence of parenting.\u00a0But I\u2019ve found that it\u2019s up to me whether I view them as opportunities or as interruptions.\u00a0A steward has opportunities.\u00a0An owner has interruptions.\u00a0The wise parent spends his days as a steward.<\/p>\n<p>On this occasion, though, I think God just wanted me to feel like a parent and to make a choice.\u00a0My choice whether to count to 10 million or not was really a choice between my son and me \u2026 between self-sacrifice and self. \u00a0And that\u2019s always the rub isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n<p>To be fair, a tired dad may actually <em>need<\/em> to choose rest over the kids.\u00a0But for me it\u2019s usually not that complicated, and I still pick me more often than not. \u00a0But sometimes I make the better choice.<\/p>\n<p>I have no idea who won the basketball game.\u00a0But I\u2019ll never forget the time I discovered that my 5-year-old son really <em>does<\/em> know how to count to 10 million.<\/p>\n<p>Who knew?<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em>Copyright \u00a9 2010 by Jim Mitchell. All rights reserved. Used by permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Good parenting is often the difference in choosing between self-sacrifice and self.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":110969,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2837],"tags":[],"equip-category":[],"cwp_profile":[3184],"class_list":["post-9015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fathers","cwp_profile-jim-mitchell"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1001\/2012\/05\/The-Choices-Fathers-Make_1040x326.jpg","uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1001\/2012\/05\/The-Choices-Fathers-Make_1040x326.jpg",1024,321,true]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Dave Meritt","author_link":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/author\/dave-merittcru-org\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Good parenting is often the difference in choosing between self-sacrifice and self.","meta_box":{"_cloudsearch_visibility":"","profile_obj_manual_select":false,"profile_obj":false,"separator":false,"enable_link":false,"login_restricted":"","content_type":"","disclaimer_banner":"","currency":false,"pricing_subtext":false,"element_type":false,"date_field":false,"date_format":false,"theme_header_position":"","post_header_is_sticky":"","is_header_overlay":"","series":false,"ignore_sticky":false,"conditional_blocks_category":false,"cta_selection":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9015"},{"taxonomy":"equip-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/equip-category?post=9015"},{"taxonomy":"cwp_profile","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-stage.familylife.com\/www\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/cwp_profile?post=9015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}