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I don't know about you, but I have this tendency to want to embrace every moment, every moment that I'm alive, every moment with my kids, every moment with my spouse. It's like I want to suffocate every last bit of breath out of everything, and I have had to rein in, so that I could have mental health on it.

And this is something that has been kind of a theme throughout my life, where this concept of time, this sense that there's only so much time and I need to make the most of it. It's like I'm one of those people that if you hear the news and something bad happened to somebody and they, say, oh, we never would have guessed. I'm like, okay, I've already thought of that, but does that prevent it?

I probably have already said, okay, let's prepare so that that doesn't happen. Let's be aware so that doesn't happen. It's like this hyper vigilance, right? And you can't live like that. There's no cause-and-effect correlation. Sometimes we can watch and avoid things that we wouldn't have avoided otherwise. It just makes sense that if we put gas in our car, we're going to avoid running out of gas on the road, right? But with time and feeling like I can do something more to squeeze more out of the time or that I can prepare more so that nothing bad happens or that there's this sense of control that I need to do more to make sure fill in the blank. Those are the areas that I've struggled in off and on through my life. And I wonder if you felt the same in any way.

Sometimes that's even gone into an existential kind of crisis. It's like, how long is eternity? Oh my goodness, what if today's the day I die? What if everything's okay and I live to be like 100? Do I really want to live to be 100? Well, maybe I do. Maybe not more than that, but maybe I could. I don't know. It depends.

Wait, how do I think about this? When I see things popping up on the Internet where you only have this much time with your kids. You've already spent 90% of your time with your kids by the time they're 18. Or the thing about how many weekends you have with your kids before they're 18, and mine are all now 18 and above. So it's like, wait a minute, that wasn't a punishment. It wasn't a fear-based punishment that I had to worry about, but these things where there will be a last time when you held your child, that you said I love you, and that you tucked them into bed. It's like, please stop doing that to me.

Then I realized, I don't have to have these existential, time oriented, fear-based concerns or issues. If any of that sounds like stuff you have struggled through, I want to help you with it. Here are the things that we can tell ourselves to calm that hyper vigilant overactive imagination. Oh my goodness, time is getting away from us. Oh my goodness. What does time mean? All of those kinds of things, any of that is able to be contained and dealt with a few simple tools.

God is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. He is outside of time. He is time. In Him, we live and move and have our being. We don't have to worry about the concept of time. There is time for everything that He has for us to do in life and anything that doesn't get done by the end of it must not have been something that was in His design for us to do if we are seeking to live for Him, right?

It'd be different if we have regrets because we have intentionally sinned or gone against seeking His path for our lives and kind of went off track and wasted time. If you are truly seeking God and living your life to serve Him and do what you believe He's leading you in, then I believe that every single thing that He has for you to do, every single person that He has for you to love, and every single moment that He has for you to be with your kids, whether they're babies, toddlers, school age kids, young adults, or even when they get to be middle-aged or whatever, every amount of time, every amount of effort, every amount of the thing that is yours, that is in your hand to do something with and steward is there because God has blessed you with these good things and we don't need to fear time. Running out or bad things happening because God is with us. Always, always God is with us. We don't have to try to predict the future or regret the past or suffocate the moments out of anything. We need to breathe in and out, be presently where we are and let the Lord direct our steps and guide our paths every day of our lives.

He gave us the moments. He gave us the people. He gives us every good and perfect gift and every blessing. He is our protector. He is our strength. He is our shield. He is the One who holds our days. He loves us and he knows us. He has good for us and good for those we love. He can be trusted. He is a good, good Father. He doesn't give as the world gives. We can rest and have peace knowing that our Heavenly Father's got us. He is the Alpha and the Omega.

And He doesn't change. We're the ones with the warped concept of time, with the warped concept of how much is on our shoulders and how much we have to do in reality. He's given us life. He's given us those we love. He's our protector and He is ever present with us. And if we rest in our present moments, right where our body is, right where we are in the truth that God's got us then we don't need to understand it all and we don't need to do more or do less. We just need to live, love, and step into the next thing that He has gifted us. It's all going to be fine.

You don't have to worry about time running out. You don't have to worry about not having enough time, having too much time, what will happen, what won't happen, what you have to do, what you don't have to do, what you'll get done, and what you won't get done. Just breathe in and release all of that tension and stress and focus your eyes on Jesus. The things of Earth will grow strangely dim in light of His glory and grace. His face is what we seek and He's here with us. Every time you see a good gift, a good and perfect gift like a smile in your child's or grandchild's eyes or see and hear a pretty bird tweeting a beautiful melody. And then there's a bird there right on cue. If you really think about God being present with you in every good thing and the fact that you are breathing in and out and are alive, that's a good thing.

We can trust in Him. So we can say, thank you body for alarming us, thank you mind for trying to help us and protect us and lead us, to prevent shoes from dropping, prevent regrets, and to make the most of things, but God's got us and we're okay. We can rest and just be present and enjoy living in the blessings of the Lord and His protection.

Go take on the day.

Do you doubt your parenting? Do you find that you wonder if you're messing your kids up? If you're doing it right? If you're too strict or not strict enough, if you yell too much or don't yell enough, if you try to figure out the schedule and it's overbooked or it's not full enough. Are they engaging? Are they learning? Are we having family time? Am I giving them all that I can for God? It's endless questioning if you let yourself. We need to know that we are good parents. When you're raising your kids, it's important to trust the truth, not the feelings.

If you can provide that safe framework for your kids in all of those areas I just mentioned, it's going to do a world of good.

Bonus Tip: If you love their parent, assuming that their parent is a healthy person in the household with you, you stand up for truth, and don't name call, this is also helpful.

Don't name call, belittle, put anybody down, even nicknames or comparisons among kids, like, "oh, you're the pretty one" or "you're the smart one" or whatever. Don't have favorites. Don't name call. Don't beat up on other people. If you're not doing those things or you're working to not do them, you can really put a healthy home together. Again, it's about relationship, not rules. With a healthy relationship in place, you are a good parent. So doing those things should keep you busy for all of your raising kids journey because it's a constant thing of refining and growing both yourself and in growing your kids up and raising them well.

Now, if you have other parenting tips that you would like to share, please go put them in the Facebook. I would love to hear from you or put them in an Instagram to me. I'd love to know your thoughts on what's worked for you parenting wise. And that could also help other people too.

But I want to tell you that the comparison game is absolutely a trap. It will trap you every time because comparison breeds dissatisfaction. Comparison is like taking an orange and making it wish it were an apple. It may very well be a piece of fruit, but it's not red, it's not smooth, it doesn't have the same taste, It has a different seed structure. And yet, oh, this fruit should look like the other fruit. That's ridiculous. That just diminishes the value of the piece of fruit you do have. 

You have been given your kids. They are beautiful gifts. They're your fruit that you are to nurture and care for and encourage, right? Those are the things that God has given you. Who they are, their characteristics, their hearts, their minds, their bodies, their spirits, their experiences, their parents. God designed everything uniquely for them. And you as the parent, get to nurture that and build that up to model and direct. And you alone need to make those decisions for your kids, you and your spouse, of course, assuming the parenting for your kids, but it's up to the parents or the guardians or caregivers or if they're grandparents listening and they're raising the kids. Whoever is the appointed person for taking care of the children, god has ordained you to do it and to do it well. And you will do it uniquely because you are not any other person on this planet and your kids are not any other person on this planet. And therefore you have a unique relationship, a unique bond, and a unique calling and a unique direction and a unique style and a unique way of going about things. Enjoy being the creative, amazing person that God made you to be in whatever way he made you to be it. And the same for your kids.

Let them be who God created them to be in the ways that God created them to be it. Don't try to make it something for them or you that fits into society's norms because you won't fit in. You were made to stand out. You were made for such a time as this for these people. You are shepherding and stewarding.

You may need to make choices right now as it's the middle of July, for things like what school or what teachers or what style or what curriculum or cyber, home, school, public, private. You may need to make decisions about do we do sleepovers? Are we having big birthday parties? How many birthday parties can we afford for them to go to? And what types of gifts and budget do we have for that? You might have things like can they sleep over? Can they join this sports team? Do we have enough time to run them back and forth between band camp and other things? Or should we limit the number of activities? Do we need to put them in every activity. Do we need to carve out more time at home? This kind of piggybacks on the episode that I did about how to make this connection with your kids in this parenting and the ways to go about that.

But this is how you make the choices. How you make the choices matters. The choices need to be God honoring and for your needs and your kids' needs together. It's a family unit, and you're not leading anybody else's family unit. You are stewarding the one you've been given. It's not better than or less than other people and their way of doing it, and neither are their ways better than or less than yours. Now, some of the ways that people go about things, there are some things that are better or worse, right? Things go better when you encourage versus criticize, right? There are things that build up rather than tear down. Of course, that stands to reason.

Whether someone participates in sports or band or art or doesn't participate in all these activities but ends up doing some sort of service or job or how much time they put into homework, it's all variable. My husband did straight A work and was valedictorian, and he never studied. I got A's, but I had to put in the time much of the time, especially in college. Okay? There are people who study all the time and get DS and they're still doing the best they can. And there are people who never study and get F's or DS or A's, right? Everybody's unique. It's not a grading system. We all need to find out where we're talented, where we're gifted, and work with how we've been uniquely designed and created to be. And that includes the design for your family and each member in it.

Enjoy the uniqueness, celebrate it, be proud of the uniqueness, own it. It's so nice now that my kids are all newly in this young adult phase, this launching phase, to be able to go, you know what? We were right. Not in every single thing we ever did or said. I'd love to be able to report that that was true. It wasn't so much right or wrong, but we were right about the things that were most important for us, for our family, and we set those as the intentions for how we parented. We were going to teach them the Lord's love and model it for them. We were going to take them to church regularly. We were going to encourage them to care for people and do volunteer service.

We are going to travel and enjoy having fun, learning and spending time together and having fun and prioritizing it. And we have a family trip coming up where they and special people in their lives are all coming with us. We're going to all go to the beach and hang out and play games and also go off on our own and do things because we all enjoy being together. This is stuff that we cultivated from very early on. Seeing new sights, relaxing, playing, having fun, enjoying each other. But we also encouraged hard work. We also encouraged following your passions and your unique creation. We have a son who's an author.

We have a daughter who's more physically oriented as far as health and fitness and training, weight training. We have a daughter who's more into ministry. Everybody took their own unique direction. That the Lord's leading them in. There's not only one way to parent. In fact, you will probably parent each of your kids in a different way. And that's okay as long as you go back to those rules at the beginning that are more like just really helpful guidelines. Not have-to's, but beneficial things to think about for your kids, for your family.

What are your goals? How will you live that out? And how will you bring your kids along to edify them so that they can go out and serve the Lord in how he's uniquely made them? Quit the comparisons. Own your uniqueness. You'll be able to look back and be glad you did.