Keepers at Home Part 6: The Good is the Enemy of the Excellent

Most people who know me have heard me say this phrase more than once. And it is still SO true. My eldest daughter's piano instructor's Mom says it this way to her grown kids..."The hardest choices in your life won't be between the good and the bad but instead between the better and the best"...well said! And having said that, the next post in the Keeper's at Home Series is about us! A situation in our own home too good not to share...

It still reverberates the "coming home/staying home" idea...We brought our daughter "home" this past week from a Mom's helper job outside the home. I think she did it for about 5-6 weeks. It was great. She was of course, wonderful at it. It did not disrupt our schedule at the house. And it greatly helped the Mom.

But---

Something wasn't right. To this moment I cannot quite put my finger on it...and I want to be careful to say it accurately as well, if that can be done with something you can't quite put your finger on! Whatever working outside the home does to a young woman was happening on a minuscule level with S. Empowerment maybe? Now, I believe in strong, capable women...I AM one. But this was different. It seemed that being in another family was blurring lines of loyalty somehow...no matter HOW you raise them...extended time with other people will have an influence over them. It wasn't a negative influence even. I would not let her be in a home whose family wasn't like-minded but still...though it was good...it wasn't the BEST.

There are a LOT of facets in the situation but here are just a few to chew on...

We thought it would be good child training for her but found that she was already well trained in child training and so the only thing left was her watching the differences in how how the two families did things...and what was she to do with that or think about that?

The point of that being ONLY this; that she did not need further child training...just continued practice and she doesn't need other children to do that with, she has her own sibs for that...

Also we were beginning to get into the mode of doing it and getting used to the effect of it not being the absolute best thing for our own family...We didn't want to leave the family without the help they thought they needed but to the point of it not being the best thing for us and us just living with it.

And mostly (and yet the hardest to express still) is that it further led us into seeing a completely separate truth being somewhat modeled and therefore affirmed..

Our girls are being raised in courtship, not dating...and we often talk about the danger of "giving a piece of your heart" before you are married and we have seen the trouble that has caused with other people, friends, etc. in boyfriend/girlfriend or dating relationships...So she began to really love this little boy like a little brother and it was becoming increasingly hard for her to separate what was best for her from the fact that she had given her heart over to this little guy. She was going to MISS him and was potentially making choices based on her attachment to him as opposed to what was best for her...(she has great love for children) WOW! Her loyalty was switching a bit to HIM and that kind of loyalty does not belong there, it belongs at home awaiting her own children. She recognized this right off and told me. She could see that soon it would just be too hard to say no anymore and still to continue to see clearly the path that God had set before her...she and we were already getting a little de-sensitized to the fact that her being gone was not the best thing and we were just getting used to it and living with it when it was NOT God's best...does that make sense? Man, how much do we as adults do that?? Condition ourselves to what is NOT God's best! Not very bright really, but human. We must listen to the still, small voice or we will cease being able to hear it.

It is very clear to us that the choices we make all the time will have a very lasting effect on our world view and on our discernment of God's voice in our lives...

It was good to see the training about why they will not date also applying to giving one's loyalty, even in part, to another family in this particular situation. It was a good experience and affirmation of how we are training them though it never had the "relief" attached to stopping- the way it would with a job you highly disliked. It was bittersweet...a little broken hearted feeling, all the way around. (more affirmation) I can't imagine if it had gone on for a year or more and then a split had to happen. (That is another whole issue I won't talk about here...the potential effect on the child)

With choices between the good and the excellent, the choice is often one made with some second guessing, some hindsight, some un-surety, but you can believe, this is the stuff of growth to maturity. Standing, in faith, to the end, for the excellent.

Today, NOW, choose the excellent for you and your family.

Blessings my friends,
Steph