Climb Every Mountain by Trudy Cathy White

Author:Trudy Cathy White
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Forefront Books

FAMILY VALUES CREATE FAMILY TRADITIONS

Your family values should center on what’s most important for you, your spouse, and your children. They identify who you are and what you aspire to be as a family. That’s what makes these values so personal, so intimately connected to each family. There is no cookie-cutter formula that works for everyone, so I would never dream of telling you what values you should select. It is 100 percent up to you. I would encourage you as you begin to establish your family values, though, to spend plenty of time thinking, talking, and praying about your selections. Don’t rush it. Whatever you set as a family value will deserve—even demand—your time, attention, and money. If you aren’t willing to actually follow through with the nitty-gritty of the values you set, don’t put it on the list. Your family values shouldn’t answer, What if we? Instead, they should perfectly crystalize, Who are we? When you know who you are as a family, what’s important to you will come into focus.

Once you have that list of values in hand, and once you start intentionally building your life around these things, something interesting happens. You’ll notice that your family starts to fall into certain patterns. Over time, these patterns will likely turn into the family traditions that will live on in the hearts and minds of your children forever. For example, you may select Service as a family value. To model that value, you might volunteer your family to serve Christmas dinner at the local homeless shelter one year. Remembering how that act of service impacted your children, you do the same thing the following year. One year becomes two. Two becomes five. Five becomes ten. Without even realizing it or forcing it from the outset, you’ve created a meaningful family tradition of service at Christmas. For the rest of their lives, your children will remember those special times every year during the holidays. They may even continue the tradition with their own families, taking the act of service you started into a new generation.

John and I have seen so many of our most beloved family traditions spring out of our values. Early on, we set a family value of Family. That means we are intentional about structuring our time, attention, and money around building wonderful, relationship-building experiences for our marriage, our children, and our grandchildren. One of those traditions is something we call Swaddling Clothes. When our children were young, they always wanted to open gifts on Christmas Eve. John and I wanted to save most of the magic for Christmas morning, but one year I came up with a compromise. I bought each child a new pair of special pajamas, washed and wrapped them, and put them under the tree. Then, when the unavoidable begging began on Christmas Eve, I told them they could open one present of my choosing. However, before they could open the gift, I shared each one’s birth story. I emphasized to each child how special they were and how much of a gift they were to John and me.

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