My top three lessons for my child(ren)

This is such a weighty question I almost didn't want to answer it. It is the kind of question that will never have a complete answer... but here is a start... at least for where I am today.

Respect Yourself
I have only one child. A beautiful teenage girl, and I can't think of a lesson that I try to teach her more than this one. I look at all the young girls around me, her friends, her cousins, and I see this one lesson violated repeatedly, without any real sense of the damage they do to themselves. I later see these same girls devasted by how they have been treated and used.



The truth is people will treat you exactly as you expect to be treated. So when you treat yourself like a cheap toy, the world will embrace that message and use you like one. I could go on and on on this subject but I won't. I just wanted to say one more time that if we expect to be treated with respect, and treat ourselves with respect, the world will as well. The other side of this lesson of course is that a person that respects themselves also treats others with respect. So it's a 2 for 1:)

Never compromise your core self
It is important for all us to know what is most important to us. We all have that one thing that defines who we want to be, and who we don't want to be. Never compromise that one thing. Life is full of compromises; some small, and some large. But that one thing, whatever it is for you. Never compromise that. Because you will give up, you will lose the battle and you will lose yourself. This is kind of an extention of lesson one.

God's plan for you, is better than any plan you could have made for yourself.
This is the biggest, most important lesson I wish that I could pass on to my daughter. It is also the hardest, and the one that I know to be right... but I can't seem to surrender to it.



We all have our struggles and surrendering my will to God, and embracing his plan for me is the hardest. It is something I struggle with everyday, and I have no doubt that my daughter will struggle with it too. I wish I could show her by example what a life surrendered to God looks like, but I am still wrestling with that, I hope that one day I get there, and I hope she does too. There is a verse I love that says..."I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. They are plans for Peace and not distaster plans to give you a future filled with hope. Jer 29:11"