THE IMPORTANCE OF VALUES
When our daughter, Samantha, was 17 we sat her down and asked her, “If you could pick the top three values that our family stood behind, what would they be?” Without hesitation, Samantha said, “Integrity, generosity, and work ethic.” Those were the top three that she just rattled off. It hit me and made me choke up because I thought, “Man, we didn’t teach her that. We didn’t sit down with our girls one day to make them learn integrity or even tell them that integrity was our value.” But the way that we lived, taught her that those were things that were important to our family dynamic, the way that we lived our life.
I remember we would take the kids during the summer to the Dollar Day at the movies. The three of us could go there for $3. I would go into the Dollar Tree and get some candy, put it in my purse, pop some popcorn at home and put that in my purse. But it wasn’t very long before Samantha said, “Mom, isn’t that being dishonest when it says not to bring food or drink inside the movie house on the front door?” It’s embarrassing when your little kid tells you where you’re failing. But she had absorbed that to be a person of integrity. It gave me a chance to apologize to her and to ask God to forgive me in front of her. So we don’t always get it right but when we all know the same language in the house, our family is going to know what values we have.
And it didn’t it doesn’t come easily. I love to tell stories about when she was wicked because she is an amazing young woman now, but she was quite a strong little girl. She would always want to play Candyland, or set up the game. So she would set it up and we come in and she won every game. We got to looking at it and she was getting all of the face cards. And so we thought, “She cheating. She’s a four year old cheater.” So we decided we were going to set up the game board and we saw horror, fill her eyes. So she came in and I think lost for the first time in her whole life to a game because she didn’t set it up. She was a… sore loser, she didn’t know how to lose. She’s very competitive. So we made up a song, “It’s a good day for you to win. It’s a good day for me to lose. I’ll be happy, that’s what I choose.” And she hated that song because she hated to lose. But we had to teach her that being fair was a good thing to learn, that fairness is a great value and that was a part of the integrity of the family.
I want to share a story about some really special people. Their names are Jason and Shan Tatum. Shan gets to stay home and homeschool their child. Here’s their backstory: Their son was born addicted to heroin. They adopted him at birth. Jason and Shan were drug addicts at one time and God miraculously saved them. So they wanted to help this baby that honestly wasn’t even expected to live. So they brought this baby home. And “Isn’t it just like God,” is how Shan would put it, “that He would just break all expectations.”
This young boy now has a food pantry for people in need. He collects food for the homeless. He goes in he visits the homeless on the streets, he gathers things that they need because his mom and dad are teaching him the value of loving and caring for people who are vulnerable. Can you imagine looking at a little boy, with food in his hands and a big smile on his face saying “This is for you?” Would that not encourage you?! The reason why I wanted to share their story is because they’re just two people on the planet. They’re not anybody special, even though I think they’re amazing. But they just made a decision to put God first and to raise their child to put God first and to help those in need. The values that I see them model in front of him, he’s now teaching the world.
Sometimes we think that our kids aren’t watching, but they hear everything we say. You know what I’m talking about. When they repeat something that you said yesterday in the kitchen while you thought they were watching TV, in the living room… and they see things that we don’t think that they see. So when they see us modeling the values that are important to us in the privacy of our own home, then they know that it’s a real value.
So if you’re modeling the wrong values, or corrupt values, your children are going to learn that too. That’s why we say this all the time, that parents who struggle with drugs and alcohol, they come to the end of themselves, when they see what it’s doing to their kids. So we help them with the reset button. They overcome the addiction by allowing God to transform them and their families.