This summer has been an interesting one for the Franich Family. Full of exciting changes as we started the summer inviting a newborn into our home. Lots to be shared there, but that will be another story for another day.
I’ve got a busy life, as we all do. Trying to balance the daily challenges that come with being a husband and a father of four. In addition to serving as bi-vocational Pastor and managing my free-lance video editing business.
I think a lot about the quote often attributed to D.L. Moody. “Our greatest fear should not be at failure, but at succeeding at something that really doesn’t matter.”
With so many opportunities in front of me, I realize that at the end of the day none of them are as important as my need to be present and engaged with my children.
As a man of faith I am reminded in scripture to keep my house in order, as a Pastor they are my first and most important ministry, as I pursue this side-business they are ultimately the why behind every piece of work I do for a client.
Im the midst of all of that, this summer in my search for a hobby and desire to find a bit of stress reliever for all of the various things going on in life, we decided to step our game up with our gardening in our small suburban yard.
I won’t share a ton about that in this post, if you are interested, I tell the story in a video I recently published to Youtube.
With every seed planted and vegetable harvested it was easy to see the spiritual and life application in all of it. Also took a lot of restrain to not throw a gardening illustration in each of my weekly sermons.
However, I did take a few lessons away from the whole experience as it relates to my parenting. Lessons I’d like to share with you in the blog.
1.It’s easier to teach a child than repair a broken man. – Fredrick Douglas
I won’t take the liberty of changing the quote. Considering I have all girls, but the principle holds for all children. At the beginning of the summer we planted a bunch of squash plants. We have done these in the past and usually have great results. However this year all the vines got tangled up and I didn’t notice it because I had gotten pre-occupied with other things.
By the time I noticed it they were pretty large.
I attempted to move a few of them and in doing so I found that once the vines were more mature, they were much more rigid and snapped pretty easily. Ultimately we didn’t get a ton of squash this year.
I reflected quite a bit on this while I was yanking all the unfruitful squash vines out of our garden. Had I just slowed down a little bit to tend the vines when they were younger we would’ve had an abundance of squash.
It’s quite the same with children. We can get so busy as Dad’s working like crazy to provide for them and keeping the schedule full of activities that we think will bring them fulfillment.
We have to be intentional to slow down and tend to them while they are younger. Life will fly by and it’s certainly true in life that as we get older we tend to get more rigid, less open to training and instruction. The earlier we learn the better off we are.
2. Gratification on the other side of patience is so much better than instant gratification.
I’ll never forget the expression on Chloe’s face when she went away for the weekend and came home to realize her sunflower had bloomed or the expression on Sadie’s face when she went out to the garden to pick her first watermelon of the year. Or Lydia when she finished putting all the bolts together for the raised beds.
With every generation we work hard to provide a life for our children better than the one we had. Even if we had a great childhood, it’s just in our nature to want to replicate that for our children as quick as possible.
We want them to have the best of life, however the best of life isn’t brought about by more stuff or is it getting everything they want in the moment. The very best moments are on the other side of patience.
We got a great lesson in this over the summer.
Every couple days Sadie would ask if her watermelons were ready. Every few days we had to tell her to wait. A few weeks ago we all thought they were ready and picked a melon too soon, the melon was yellow on the inside and tasted like dirt. However the few weeks after that, Sadie still continued to ask about her melons, but when asking her language changed from I want my watermelon now, to lets make sure they are ready so they doin’t taste yucky.
We picked the first ripe watermelon just a few hours ago and there was quite the celebration.
This also serves as a reminder for me in my desire to create a better life for my family. It’s fine to slow down, take the extra day off of work, not upgrade to the bigger house so soon. If it means that I’m going to have more time to engage as a father. I’m working on this.
In conclusion, there’s a lot more that could be said. Like the entire garden bed full of beets that didn’t produce anything but the greens because we didn’t give them the space to grow. Maybe that’s the way I’ll wrap this blog up.
Reminding myself that it’s a necessary work as a Dad to train my children while they are young, be patient and encourage patience in them, but also give them the space they need to grow into the women God has called them to be.
It’s not always and easy road trying to figure all of this out, but it is so important and one I’m committed to becoming better at each and every day.
