Common Sense Reborn

Shifting Focus Part 5

⁹“You parents-if your children ask for a loaf of bread, do you give them a stone instead? ¹⁰Or if they ask for a fish, do you give them a snake? Of course not! ¹¹So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him.“ (Matthew 7:9-11)

Yesterday brought a bittersweet moment for me since returning home from Poland. Yesterday marked the end of my military orders, and the official return to civilian life. Coming off military orders is not the part that is bittersweet. There were several times while working in Poland that I felt like I could not get out of the Army uniform fast enough, but those moments mostly came from some of the poor leadership that exists within the Headquarter Battalion for the Third Infantry Division. Yesterday was bittersweet because it brought to close my 26 days of military leave that I had accrued and had enabled me to have nearly uninterrupted time with my family for the past three and a half weeks. After being away from them for eight months and six days, 26 days of leave was the least the Army could give me to be able to reconnect with them. Only by the grace of God did this leave land on my long weekend off for Savannah Police Department, otherwise, today, would also mark my return to the blue uniform and running the streets of east Savannah. But God’s timing is perfect, and I am blessed with a final weekend off, where I will relish my time with my family, spend some time with my parents, and enjoy the greatest gifts in my life for Father’s Day weekend: my children.

As I lay next to my son, SGZ2, the middle child, the boy nestled in between two amazing daughters, I was thinking of the past four weeks and how I had really not spent a lot of time with my two older children. SGZ3 wants all our attention, all the time, and this takes away from what I can give to SGZ1 and 2. In case you are new here and are wondering why I refer to my kids as SGZ1, 2, and 3, it is because we chose names for all three that began with the same letters, and with special care, when Mrs. Z and I did so, they all ended up with the exact same letters in their names. For example, their middle names are Grace, Grady, and Graye, all five letter names that obvious start with ‘G’. SGZ2 is very independent, almost as much so as SGZ1. He has three friends his age on our cul-de-sac, and they all play very well together, so he is usually out of the house playing with his buds. As I lay next to my son, who I absolutely adore, I thought back to every day and I asked myself, what I could have done differently to create more time to spend with him. How many lost opportunities did I miss to spend the one thing our children ask from us above all others, and that one thing is our time. My leave began the Sunday before their school year ended, so I lost half a week there with the oldest two being in school. The second part of that first week I was with them every second I could. The next week we traveled to Florida and filled four days with fun in the hot Florida sun and reconnecting to my immediate family. Then the following week, Mrs. Z and I spent Monday-Friday volunteering for our home churches Kid’s Camp, and we found ourselves surprising worn out every day. This week has been dedicated to fixing up our home, after we had an appliance made disaster strike while I was in Poland (our upstairs washing machine’s drain hose popped off and flooded a large part of the upstairs, through the ceiling and into our downstairs powder room, entry way, and two downstairs closets). When the water removal company responded to dry up the flooding, they ripped up a lot of the carpeting and flooring, and we have opted to do the repairs ourselves to be able to use the money we recouped from our insurance claim toward other things. So, my final week has been filled with laying flooring, which has not been going as smoothly as I had hoped, but I am getting it done one plank at a time. The only other thing that really has infringed on my time with my children has been, I hate to write this, the time I am devoting here and to leading my Bible Study, which I feel is important to the Kingdom Work Jesus asks us to perform to produce ‘good fruit’ in our lives. However, as a parent, my most important job in my Kingdom Work, is leading my children to having a life-changing relationship with Jesus.

But as I lay next to my son, I made a commitment to eliminate the distractions that I must remove from my life to enable me to invest in my children every second of every day. Parents, Uncles, Aunts, Guardians, if you are reading this, I implore you to cut these needless distractions out of your life. Every second you spend on your phone, in front of a TV watching your favorite distractions, or behind a computer screen, you are taking precious time away from little people that need your attention and love. Nothing on social media is as important as playing with the young people in your life. Nothing happening in the lives of others is worth distracting you from what is happening in your children’s lives. So, I beg of you, as Jesus so elegantly put in the verses above, when your children ask you for the gift of time, do not give it to them half-heartedly. Give them everything you have. They are only little once, and you do not want to be laying in your bed late at night when they are grown and out of your house, begging for that time back. We all know we cannot get that back. So put off the distractions, do not let work get in the way of investing in your children, do not let playing with grown people take away from the time you could be playing with your children. Work, adults, even your time with God will always be there, but the time you have with your children when they are little only lasts for a fleeting moment. Give them your all when you give them that time. For you Dad’s out there, as you celebrate your holiday this weekend, be a good, good father, as your Heavenly Father is to you. What would this world be like if our Father gave of His time to us just half-heartedly?

So, moving forward, if I am not posting on here as much as I have been this last month, please do not take it personal. Just know that the time I am not investing here, is going toward three amazing young people, that I am doing my best to shape and mold to be world-changers. When they grow old enough to start their own websites and blogs in their attempts to reach as many people as possible, I will be on here sharing that work with y’all. But until then, in my absence, I urge you to keep reading the Good Book, keep doing the Good Work, and keep growing the Kingdom, and never forget what it was like to be a child, as JJ Heller sings in her new single: “To Be a Child Again.”