Overcoming the Beliefs That Limit Your Family
Doing Battle When It’s Absolutely Necessary – Part 5
Everyone has a box that holds them back, we call this box our limiting beliefs. If you’re in the church world, we call these the lies that the devil tells you. Just because you have constraints and boundaries that another might not have doesn’t mean you can’t do anything or the things that you thought you could not do. Everyone has constraints and parameters they have to work around in life. You’re no different. The question is how will you navigate yours? How will you make your situation so attractive that others would rather walk in your shoes?
You are an outside of the box kind-of-thinker.
In whatever life has thrown at you, give thought to what’s possible. If you only look at the closed doors in your world you’ll miss out on seeing the doors that are open. Think outside the box. Think outside your box. Pamela and I made the decision to think of what’s possible within the parameters that’s available. With most, the majority of our children, we share custody. We don’t really like to use that term, but rather we share time. It makes more sense to think of custody as time.
Therefore, you’ll learn to manage the time you have, not the custody you have. You see whether you see it this way or not, most of us share time. We compete with sports, daycare, school, church, other people, and other activities. That said, we must manage how we use the time we have with our most prized possessions. Side-note: yes, I said possessions. Our children are our possessions. As a parent of a daughter, I heard someone once say, who would allow their daughter to go out with someone they were unwilling to trust with the keys to their home? Which is more important, your home , your car, or your child?
Let me get back on track. To think outside of the box is to think unlike the norm, to think unlike everyone else thinks. Look at the time you spend with your children as an investment or an opportunity to sow seeds you’d like to harvest in the future.
Also consider the seeds you are sowing that you don’t want to come back and bite you in the future.
You can change unwanted harvests you receive by changing the seeds you’re sowing.
At the beginning of the shared time we had arranged for Tamia, we gave her gifts each week when she returned. While this seemed like a good idea, it was sowing seeds that we didn’t want to sow. Allow me to explain. Pamela and I discussed what this would seem like. We were treating Tamia like she was away from home and visiting us. While the out-of-the-box thinking we’d planned was for her to have two homes. Two of everything. Two birthdays. Two Christmases. Our out-of-the-box motto was this; God blessed you to be a part of a blended family and with that should come a few added blessings that you can’t get under normal circumstances.
There’s some advice I gained from the New Testament [1] that says, “don’t act thoughtlessly.” In other words, put some thoughts into your actions. You see, normal is the person who places little thoughts on their actions. We’re not normal and neither are you, so put some thought as to how you do life. That same advice I learned goes on to say that, “we must understand what God wants us to do.” [1] Not to sell you on the God-thing, which I would love to, but I want to sell you on a thought. Anyone you call God, should have a better, higher thinking than you and I. Wouldn’t you think? Therefore, what would higher thinking look like when it comes to how we do family? Think on that.
We couldn’t act as if Tamia was somewhere other than home. We defined clear roles so that Tamia would never be confused. We had to create a world that while not normal, it still needs to be good because she is one of our most prized possessions and deserves the best life we can offer her. Therefore, managing our shared time comes easy. We have a plan and the plan is to sow the seeds that yield the best harvest for us all.
Today is Friday!
Everyone has a box that holds them back from something. These limits and limiting beliefs don’t have to get in your way of making your family work. Let me remind you that all it takes is some out-of-the-box thinking, uncommon thinking. Secondly, you can change any outcome by changing the inputs that create the outcomes. All you need is a plan. It’s your life, your business and it’s your plans that make it work like it’s working.
Question: what limiting belief is holding you back from having the family you dream of?
Reference #1: Ephesians 5:17 NLT, Bible.com, accessed January 10, 2021, https://www.bible.com/116/eph.5.17.nlt
All Scripture references used by permission, see our Scripture copyrights.
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