Priorities.
By Troy L Parrish.

Recent events in the lives of my family have given me pause to think and to evaluate my priorities.  I believe that it is a good practice to evaluate one's priorities on a regular basis but I confess this is not something I do as a part of my scheduled life, I am often reminded by life events and messages that I hear along the way.

It was a joyous occasion that was the first event that prompted me to evaluate my priorities, the graduation of our oldest (not a boy!).  Of course this ceremony demarcates a new stage of life and gives reason for the evaluation of how we have done as parents in the raising of our children.  The second prompt was a tape (The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People) in which the writer encourages us to keep first things first.  I was reminded of Chuck Swindoll's book The Tyranny of the Urgent. There are a lot of things that present themselves as urgent but are not always important.  The last event involved a tragedy in which a family we know fairly well had an 18 month old daughter get into a swimming pool and drown (as of this writing there is some slim hope for life).  All of this reminded me of my priorities.

My daughter's graduation represented a culmination of a significant amount of work.  We are a home school family and have been since our children began school.  Consequently, her graduation first represents a fair amount of effort simply getting her to a place where she actually enjoys learning and doing well in her studies is important to her.  But more importantly, the evidence of faith and character had an opportunity to be demonstrated through this event and it was reassuring to know that there indeed was some character that had been developed.  We chose character development as one of the primary reasons to home school.  It is good to know that this was not wasted.

The last event, the tragic event of being confronted with the loss of a child reminds us of the brevity of life.  I find that death has that effect on us and will often remind us of what really is important and what things really draw our attention and energy that is not important.  Undoubtedly, the attention we would like to give to our relationships, particularly the relationships in family represent a high priority, at least in principle, for most of us.  But the harsh reality is that the busyness of life often pulls us away and the relationships suffer.  As a therapist, I see repeatedly that family relationships suffer, particularly marriages, as a direct result of neglect.  Not out of malice but simply due to the fact that "There is no time."

The middle event, the reminder to put first things first is not a new principle to any of us.  Yet, the urgent has a tendency to push the really important things to second or third place, or sometimes completely out of the picture for a while. Yet when it is all said and done, it is only the important things that will matter.  Will it really matter that you answered your phone each and every time it rang, or that your lawn was always mowed on Saturday?  We are bombarded weekly, if not daily with urgent needs; messages to return, forms to fill out, reports to do, errands to run, practices to make and the list goes on.  If you are like me at the end of the day after dealing with the urgent, there is no time or energy to deal with the important.

Well, now it is summer and time for summer vacation.  Most of you will have your boys home with you full time (if this isn't a regular part of your schedule already).  This presents the perfect opportunity to evaluate your priorities in regard to your sons.  Of course, there needs to be time spent on relationship building with your boys.  There is no substitute for time spent on a relationship.  Without the time, you will not have much of a relationship.  S M Davis, a Southern Baptist preacher in an article entitled Changing the Heart of a Rebel advocates that in order bring that child around you must completely insulate that child from all outside influences and keep them by your side at all times.  It is this intensive time spent together that influences that child a helps to change the heart attitudes.  This principle is the same for all relationships, spend the time, you will not regret it.

Most of you got the list of activities when you signed up for the news letter, if you haven't signed up, do so and you will get that list.  You can see a number of activities on the list that are cool and right up the alley that boys would enjoy.  But you will also see activities that involve household chores.  When done together, it creates a sense of team and cooperation as well as joy in helping mom or dad.  It can be of great help in creating a stronger sense of family that both us as parents and they as children crave.

Of course, there is no greater priority that our relationship with God through Christ.  Trying times provide us with the opportunity to demonstrate to our children the necessity of this relationship and the values and support it offers.  These recent events have given us opportunity to reinforce some of our values with our children as well as confirm the relationship that one of children has with God.

I realize that this is not the typical article for Boys Behavior, but after all, if we are not hitting the really important things in our relationship with our boys, all the other insightful and cleaver things will ultimately be of no value.  I hope you have a great summer.