Intentional: Life on Purpose

So first up in our Baby Steps for Big Words series, let’s knock it out of the park with intentional – the act of doing this life on purpose.  This is a big one, friends.

 

 

I still remember the first time one of my kids ran out into the street.  It was my husband’s birthday and we were standing on the sidewalk in front of a Mexican food restaurant with extended family.  Why do these heart skipping events happen when the most adults are around?  Distraction, I guess.

Anyhow my daughter, who was 3 or 4 at the time, caught sight of her grandma and in great excitement shot to her at full speed, completely unaware of the busy city street she was crossing.

For me it was one of those slow motion moments where time and space hang in the balance.  Noise was mostly drowned out, except the sound of a motorcycle approaching, that is.  There were parked cars clogging my line of vision.   I couldn’t see motorcycle approaching.  I could only hear it, feel the roar of it’s engine, the roar that sent off sirens in my mama heart.

It feels like you are grasping at air in those moments, child out of arm’s reach, motorcycle nearing, gap narrowing.  We yelled.  We all yelled, with everything we had.  Thank God we won the battle of decibels with the motorcycle and my sweet little girl stopped short.  The tears came quickly as she saw panic-stricken faces and realized the frightened yelling was all aimed at her.

Relief in those moments is a mix of joy and pain, when you realize the calamity you were just spared from, when you let your mind wander for a moment to what might have just happened.

But in sorting that all out I noticed one thing, my daughter was completely clueless. She had no idea she should look both ways.  I failed to teach her.

These things, that training, it doesn’t happen on it’s own.  Sadly, as parents, we often expect behavior that we have failed to train and teach.  We get embarrassed and frustrated, blame our kids, the schools.  And yet, in the end, who is really responsible to teach those children?

We don’t stop there though.  We do the same for ourselves.  We see a good marriage and think, “wow, that would be awesome”.  We see a fit mama and say, “I really need to lose a few pounds”.  We see a tidy home, a well cooked meal, a woman who loves well, serves well, leads well and we either feel like an idiot for never getting our act together or, maybe, decide we’ll get after it too.  Tomorrow.

 

 

 

Here’s the thing, and I’m sure we can all figure it out if we look a little closer, none of these things happen on accident.  They just don’t.

Maintaining a tidy home takes effort, intention.  Having a fabulous marriage takes (loads of) effort, intention.  Raising kids that know how to cross the street without getting hit by motorcycles takes effort, intention.

 

 

Isn’t that awesome?  Look how far we got?  But guess what, intention is a big word.  Huge, actually.  So tomorrow morning you wake up and tell yourself that you are going to be intentional….and have no idea what the heck that looks like.  Not awesome.

So let’s break this down a little more.  One tiny step at a time.  Let’s unpack intentional instead of throwing it around like a happy buzzword, like the Mickey Mouse Band-aids that my three year old believes will fix anything.

Band-aids and buzzwords never really do fix everything.

So we will unpack this together, one piece at a time.  We’ll talk parenting and friendship, marriage and faith.  We’ll see how we can make intentional less of a big word and more of a big impact.  A game changer.

Beginning with marriage.  You’ll find that post here!