Caring For My People Starting In Our Home

How We Care For Each Other

Caring For Our Main People – Part 2

In this lesson, let’s talk about how we do the business of our home with our main people. What are you (we) doing in our home that enhances the lives of our closest people? I have a plan and you need a plan. So what’s in the plan? We’re going to share our plan for respecting each other, establishing the guidelines for our name sake, and the practices we have to be the people we desire to be. We’re not going to leave our lives, our business, to chance.

“A house [a home] is built by wisdom and becomes strong through good sense [having a plan]. Through knowledge its rooms [areas] are filled with all sorts of precious riches and valuables.” – ‭‭Proverbs‬ ‭24:3-4‬ ‭NLT‬‬

In other installments (such as “The Key to Executing Our Life-Our Business“) we’ve discussed the mechanics of how our life, our business is run. In this episode, we’re after defining how we care for the main people inside of our home. If we don’t have ground rules (a plan) on how we care for each other, then we don’t have a plan to make certain each person inside our home will have a life of success. It takes wisdom to build a house; in this case a home.

The Thought or Concept:
Whether you realize it or not, your home is where your family’s business is run and managed. Out of those four walls will produce whatever it is you’ve decided to produce. Whether or not each individual is contributing to a singular goal or not is determined by what you’ve established within those four walls. Whether or not you’re working together as one unit is determined by what goes on inside your home. It takes wisdom and a plan for your wisdom to build the home you wish to have. At Kerry A. Clark & Co. its our goal to provide tools, ideas, and information to help you have the knowledge to fill the rooms (so to speak) of your home, your life, with precious riches and valuables. We want you to have success in your home. 

In planning this message, I uncovered seven areas or rooms as the quote above alludes. I’d like to share them to help you think of ways you can ensure your family’s success.

Sidenote: I’m not in anyway suggesting that these areas are the best or represent all we do to add value to each other. This is a starting point.

The Practice:
I was trying to think of the best way to present this information without being all over the place. I had in my mind to share details on how we share information with each other, the excitement we have with our gadgets, focusing on how we support what we do best, and how each person has their own unique role within the family. It started out really good until my writing went in varying directions. After taking a step back, I came up with these seven areas that would better represent how we care for each other as a nuclear family and how these areas would benefit you reading them. 

1. Our Space
   You need your space, I need my space, and we need our space. We’ve found as we do life together that it works best when each person has a place in the home they can call their own. We need our own space to be an independent individual, dependent on who God makes us. Yet, at the same time to create an atmosphere of unity, we need to make sure we all have a space to live, laugh, and love together. While this seems intuitive, you’d be surprised at how many families miss this one and neglect the internal problems it creates. When I speak of space, this also includes things. Everyone has things that are important to them and we respect each person’s things and their space. Our things have varying importance to each of us. That means one person may have a value for something that another doesn’t. Like Tamia’s make-up. Her make-up is her most important possession outside her phone. It’s actually funny watching Tamia become an adult and seeing how confident it makes her knowing that she has a bathroom she no longer has to share with anyone. Our space and our things help us become better individually and better together.
2. Our Laws
   You may not think about it this way, but with every civilization established, so are laws established. We believe every family needs a set of laws. Like a business, your family needs a set of bylaws, a list of rules by which it is governed. Being people of faith, we shape our laws and bylaws by the Bible. So, if you were to see inside our home, you’d hear a lot of terms from the Bible and from church. You’ll hear how we intentionally work and weave Its principles into our lives. Here’s an example. One law we have is to never argue over God’s word; It is truth.
   Every family needs a set of boundaries. It’s these boundaries that tell us as a Clark this is what we do and what we can’t do. It tells us when a violation has occurred and its consequences. It also tells us of our successes and the rewards. You don’t have to start with a book of laws, but you need to begin defining the laws for your family.
3. Our Attitude
   Attitude is Everything. Pamela and I instituted a process that rewards Tamia when she receives unsolicited comments from adults about her attitude. This is just one law that defines a success and a reward. We know that normal people don’t always have the best attitude and since we’re not trying to be normal, we must always have a good attitude. Attitude is not a product of what we have or experience, but rather a decision made beforehand. We’ve decided each morning to put our attitudes in check.
   Let me come clean, I need the most help from both Pamela and Tamia in this area as I can be pretty rough and intense at times. As we care for each other, it’s our goal to have an attitude that represents Christ well. We all partner together when we see a problem in one another’s attitude. We know if we can control our attitudes, we can control everything else and overcome every adversity.
4. Our Disciplines
   This is my absolute favorite word.To me discipline and love are related. The Bible says that God disciplines those He loves.
   
   “because the Lord disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in.” – bible.com/111/pro.3.12.niv
   
   My wife would probably go as far to say that I invented the word. People I know well give me too much credit in this area. However, we use this word to make each other better. It’s our strength as a nuclear family. Tamia for example, is so disciplined that we never have to wait on her for school. She sets her alarms, prepares, is dressed, ready, and waiting before Pamela and I are ever ready to leave the house. Imagine that.
   
   “Jesus Christ is [disciplined] the same yesterday, today, and forever.” – bible.com/116/heb.13.8.nlt
   
   Pamela has made this her word for the year. One of the mottos we live by is to be like God who is the same today, yesterday, and forever. That’s discipline. Discipline is a key pillar to ensure we reach the goals we’ve set for our home.
5. Our User-friendly Home
   Together, we work to make our home one that can be used. We’ve decided not to have our home be a show place, but one where friends, and family can feel comfortable, peaceful, and special. We’re making our home a place, a tool for how we do life our way. Our plan is to have our home represent who we are. We don’t change how we do our home when visitors come. Because our home is what we’ve established we’re proud of it and never ashamed to share it with others. “How we “do” home should never resemble how someone else “does” home.”  This is our home and because we have no problems with who we’re becoming we don’t mind sharing it with others. Therefore what you see inside our four walls is the same as what you see outside those four walls. Now that’s almost unheard of; it’s uncommon.
6. Our Giving
   Giving is a priority and a habit we’re working to get better at. So, we look for ways to give together. We give good gifts to each other. We desire to be the biggest blessing to others. It would be a shame for us to be followers of Christ and be the weakest givers. We know more non-church-goers who are more generous than most folks we know who are church-goers. What a bad representation? We have a goal of making sure we are the most generous to those close to us. Those in our world. How much sense would it make to take care of the needs of people in distant lands only to find out those we are directly responsible to and for have unmet needs? Therefore we have a plan to do more in all facets of our generosity strategy as a family.
7. Our Example
   Over the past couple years, we’ve settled on leaving a mark in life for others to envy. What this means is that we plan, have plans, to live a lifestyle that others envy. Our goal is to have others see who we are and have them wish that at least for one day they were us. In other words, we have a strategy in place to set such an example for others that they envy us.
   
   “in all things show yourself to be an example of good deeds, with purity in doctrine, dignified,” – bible.com/100/tit.2.7.nasb
   
   Living a life that others might envy isn’t just going to happen and it’s not going to happen with wishful thinking. It takes intentional actions and we’re doing it together every single day. We have documented accounts of our actions finally returning results that might just please God and that makes it worthwhile.

Our home is the place where we live; it’s where our business takes place. We make sure we place a lot of thought and energy into making it the best place for us to do what we do and be who we plan to be. We’re not designing it for guests because guests are infrequent visitors, we design it for the business called our lives. Lives that when guests show up they envy us for what we have accomplished together.

“I [The Queen of Sheba] didn’t believe what was said until I arrived here and saw it with my own eyes. In fact, I had not heard the half of it!” ‭- bible.com/bible/116/1KI.10.7.NLT‬

What if people saw what you and your family are and had the words the Queen of Sheba used to describe what she experienced when she visited King Solomon? This response is what we’re working towards starting in our home.‬ 

Today is Friday!
Let me leave you with a series of questions from this lesson that might help you prepare your plans for caring for the people you love inside your home.
How can you better respect each other’s space and at the same time have a unified environment?
What laws have you established but haven’t documented or what laws do you wish you had documented for your home?
What can your family do at home to help improve its inhabitants attitude?
What disciplines can you start and hold each other accountable to within your home?
How can you make the home you currently have more useful to how you and your nuclear family do life together?
How can you together implement ways to be more generous in your world?
In what ways can you be an example as a family that other families would envy?
Remember it’s your home, the place where your life, your business takes place.  

Thanks for visiting kerryaclark.com. Until next Friday, care for your people starting in your home.

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Our team has worked very hard putting it together. We designed it to help you and your family move the needle forward in making your life your business. Find out more about the Family plan here.[/su_note]