Monday, June 16, 2008

Being The Family Man Or Woman

“Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.”
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-George Bernard Shaw
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I don’t know about you, but there’s some prickly truth in the above quote. That is how it strikes me. How does it strike you? For some it’s a means to justify what they feel intrinsically as their sole calling -- being a family man or woman. For me, I cannot help but be dissuaded from this alone. I constantly look to the horizon to look for, and find, that ‘something else’ that functions as my distant and somehow ‘nobler’ purpose. ‘Where will I be great?’ is the call of my soul. Yet, the truth of the value of the Family Man or Woman resounds.
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Do I miss the point? I think so. It’s a truth that I know in my head but not yet in my heart. I love my family as the primary thing in my life, but is it enough? I love my family and perhaps they will make me great? -- as if greatness were the only goal.[1] I think, ‘if I think this way, do others?’ I mean, do you? Do you want more from life than what the ordinary life offers? Or is it that what’s construed within family is enough for you? For some I suspect, the greatness of family is a distant dream yet to be realised, or worse still, a dream had, but no longer; yet I, and others like me often see it not great enough. The greatness of family might be fobbed off by some (of which I’m tempted also) as humdrum.
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Don’t get me wrong, I do not think there is any nobler purpose than to love a wife or husband and one’s children, grandchildren and so on -- if you’ve been blessed with a family. But, is there more? That is my question. The fact of the matter is God is silent on the subject. The answer is up to me. And it is up to you. What is the choice?
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I know this one thing. I’ll feel content if I only achieve a happy, healthy family during my life. I’ll have lived a very good and acceptable life. I’ll have contributed to the furthering of the generations and those that carry my name will do so (as far as possible) without scar from me. That is the key. The breaking of generational curses and bringing of blessings all in God’s name.
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I cannot help but wonder how many of us think ambitiously; to put family, spouse, children on the backburner to chase career or fantasy -- that ‘great’ thing. I dare say there is no truth to that great thing unless we discover it and work at it diligently, and with it weigh it in the light of all our other responsibilities, chief of all, family. The biggest insult to our Creator is this: that we neglect our family -- that organism that relies so heavily on parent, the family man or woman. Continue to search for, and strive to see, the greatness in family.
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Copyright © 2008, Steven John Wickham. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.
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[1] There’s a ‘great’ amount of folly in this thought, that greatness is the only goal.

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