What Story is Your Family Writing

In his book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, Donald Miller talks about the idea that all of us are writing a story with our lives and that families write a story as a family. It got me to think about the story I am writing with Katie and the kids.

How do you know what story you are writing? Look at your bank account and calendar. What you spend your time doing is what you find important and what you find important is the story you are writing with your life. We can say that we find something valuable and important, but the truth, if we don’t put our time and money into that, it isn’t important.

I will hear people say, “I wanted to be at church” or “I want to give back to God” or “I wanted to go and serve” but and then they lay out why it didn’t happen. Here is what I know about our schedules. We all put into our schedules what is important. Whether that is work, our kids games, watching our favorite football team, date night with our spouse. We all do what matters to us. The question we have to ask is, “Am I spending my time doing the right stuff? Am I spending my money on what matters?”

As a dad, I’m starting to think about the story my family is writing. What will my kids look back on and remember? 20 years from now, what will Ava, Gavin and Ashton say was important to me, to us as a family? Will they say they were important? Will they say my job was more important than they were?

What about our money? Will they say we were generous or were we a greedy family? Did we have the attitude of servants or did we look for ways to take advantage of people?

What happens as kids grow, they know what story we are living (usually before we do) and they write that story with us. The story we write as a family, affects the story they write as kids and into adulthood.

So right now, what story are you writing? What story are you writing as a family?

I hope that when I’m gone my kids say the story I wrote said this:

• Serving God as a family, not my job
• Katie was more important than everything but God
• I was passionate about being a follower of Jesus
• That they mattered more than everything (3rd to Katie and God)
• My job came 4th
• That they would love God and his bride and still serve Him
• They would be more generous than I ever was