Awakening the King: How My Daughter Changed My Focus
I have been married for 5 ½ years and it has been a great experience. Marriage has caused me to discover and learn so much about myself: the things I am really great at, the things I
I have been married for 5 ½ years and it has been a great experience. Marriage has caused me to discover and learn so much about myself: the things I am really great at, the things I need to work on, qualities and abilities that I didn’t realize I had and my personality “quirks” that I thought were normal. Now, it is also helping me realize one of my biggest dreams: to have my own family.
I recently found out that I have a little girl on the way and I am filled with so much joy and hope. Even though my little girl isn’t here yet, I think about her all the time. When I’m in the car, I look in my rearview mirror and just imagine she’s in her car seat playing with a toy. When I’m at the store and I see a little kid walking with their father, I am thinking to myself, “It not going to be long before I can do that with my little girl.” This little girl already means to the world to me and I haven’t even met her yet.
Even as I think about her today, I have noticed that there are a few masculine qualities that have grown stronger in me since I found out she was on her way. The three I can sense that have grown the most is: a protector, a servant and increased responsibility. I’m sure most men will agree with the protector quality increasing especially when you have a little girl. But essentially, there’s a desire in me to protect her from ever having to experience the “bad or ugly” side of life. Secondly, there’s just a desire in me to want to serve her – to show her how she should be treated and how she should expect to be treated. And lastly, I sense an increased level of responsibility in the life that I will I model before her and the knowledge I will pass on to her.
It has hit me, that over the course of her life, I will be responsible for (or play a huge part) in the person my daughter becomes, the type of wife she becomes and type of mother she becomes. I’ve realized that these roles of responsibility of fatherhood will not only affect my daughter’s life, but also her future husband’s life and my grandkids’ lives – essentially it will affect my generations. And it was this very thought here about my unborn daughter that awaken a dormant dream in me.
One day while daydreaming about the joys of fatherhood, I had a three-second thought interruption that I believe will be one of the defining moments of my life. Within this three-second window, a lot of “life-clarity” came to me. The best way I can describe it is I saw my life as a track field and each lane on the track was a different area of my life. Lane 1 was family, Lane 2 was career, Lane 3 was finances, Lane 4 was dreams and goals and Lane 5 was community impact. As I was thinking about my daughter, I realized that I was making tremendous progress in Lanes 1, 2 and 3, but I was making little or no progress in Lanes 4 or 5. I realized I could continue living life in Lanes 1, 2 and 3 and my daughter would have a good life. But, failing to intentionally make progress in Lanes 4 (Dreams and Goals) and 5 (Community Impact) would rob her of the chance of living a great life.
We all grew up in homes where certain things were normal and over time, they became the things we loved and enjoyed. For me, it was watching home improvement shows with my mom on Saturday night or spending all day fishing with my uncles. These are just a few of the things that made up normal everyday life for me. And as an adult, I still love to do them. And there are certain things I want my daughter to experience as being a normal part of her life.
For my daughter, I want for it to be normal for her to see her parents building something that much bigger than themselves. I want it to be normal for her to see them talking about an idea, and then taking steps to make it happen. I want it to be normal for her to see them running their own companies. I want for it to be normal for her to see them doing things to impact their community. I want it to be normal for her that we spend time in the summer helping people who are less fortunate. And I want to be normal for her to be helping with it all along the way – just as it was normal for me to spend all day fishing with my uncles or watching home improvement shows with my mom. And hopefully, making an impact in her community or bringing an idea into reality is something she will come to love and enjoy. And I hope it becomes a normal part of life that she passes on to her husband and kids.
I realized from all of this that if this is the life I want my daughter to experience, I’ve got to get focused and busy with my dreams, goals and community impact ideas. I can say that since that three-second thought interruption, I have a new focus about my life and my family’s life. Immediately after that, I had to ask myself some hard questions. I had to be honest with me about me. As I began to contemplate the answers, I realized one of the reasons I was not making progress is I’ve failed to addresses some weaknesses that I have: the main one being procrastination. As I look back on it, I realized I put my dreams, goals and the community impact ideas on a “one day” plan (meaning I’ll work on that one day), but put my career, family and finances on a today plan (meaning I must work on this today). I have to stop putting my dreams, goals and community impact ideas on the one day plan and move them to the today plan.
So what am I going to do now? Information and knowledge are worthless, if you choose to do nothing with you. One of the first things I did was pulled out my binder with all my business and community impact ideas and looked over it. Secondly, I went through each idea to see what still resonated in my heart or what was just an empty idea. I then narrowed the list down to see which ones I could start soon. And I’m now in the process of choosing the first one to implement. And the most important step I’m taking is choosing two people to hold me accountable to this and to make sure I don’t become prey to procrastination. One of the people I am choosing is my wife. I never really shared in details with her my dream for our family or this binder of ideas. I shared bits and pieces, but not the entire picture.
Well, last night we went out to dinner and I began to share with her this dream I have for our family and told her what I plan to do and when I plan to do it. One reason I think I didn’t share this with her before is I didn’t want to become known to her as a man who talks a lot and produces little; so therefore, I shared little. But there was such freedom as I laid this vision for our family before my wife and shared from my heart with her. And her affirmation and agreement has lifted my confidence in getting it done.
I learned an important lesson last night too: kings have visions, they share their visions, then they put plans together to accomplish them.
Your lanes may be much different than mine, but ask yourself, “What in my life have I been putting on hold, that I know I should be pursuing that will make life great for me, my family and my community?” Answer these questions and allow the KING to be awakened in you.
