The Mission of Parenting With the Help of God
Being a parent is the most rewarding, yet the most difficult mission we will have in our lives. There are three components of a mission: purpose, vision and goals. Let's look at these three components and see how they apply to parenting.
Purpose: gives us the reason we are doing something. Our purpose in parenting is because we love our children. This will not necessarily make us good parents. We have to love our children enough to bring them to the point in their life where they are able to leave us and live productive lives independently.
Vision: is what we see as the end product of our parenting. We need to focus on this vision throughout our parenting journey in order to successfully meet our ends. It is this vision that gives us endurance. Through our parenting experiences we often get distracted, discouraged and feel that we are failing. These could very well cause us to lose our focus. The way to re-focus is through prayer, scripture, meditation and worship.
Goals: are the final result of a mission. Our mission should be to raise healthy productive children who have a strong relationship with our Loving God.
Now the question is, "How do we accomplish all of these?" The answer is by being faithful. Faithful, not only to our children, but to God. Faithfulness is one of God's attributes. God is faithful because he fulfilled every covenant he made. We are called to imitate God. A person that honors his commitment is faithful. We need to not only honor our commitments to our children, but we need to honor those with God as well.
As praying parents we can find success in two ways. First, we foster our own healthy relationship with God. In that we strengthen our faith, we keep God's Word, we let God guide our actions. Second, through prayer we have the power to ask God to intercede for our children, to guide them through life, to keep them safe in his love. Through prayer we can Let go and let God.
Daily Prayers online: http://sacredspace.ie/?lang=en
Prayers for Our Children: Online Resources -
http://www.2heartsnetwork.org/parents.htm
http://catholicism.about.com/od/prayers/qt/Prayer_Parents.htm