Memories waft like mist through my now empty nest. I see shoes littering the floor leading me to believe a giant tennis-shoe-wearing centipede must live under the sofa. I hear voices bounce from laughter to argument to screeches of “MMMMOOOOOMMM!” and back to laughter before I make it upstairs. I smell cinnamon batter rise from a hot griddle as kids whoop over pancake dinner and proclaim (at least in this syrup-drenched moment) that I am the best mom ever.

The family-centeredness of my memories make them richer, deeper, and more precious. I valued each child as an individual. Yet, the organism of “The Macias Family” had a personality all its own. Our family’s quirks, preferences, and habits bound our hearts together in ways that continue after the kids have flown the nest. I’m convinced each moment of cultivating THIS family was worth the effort.

God displays His creative genius in the variety of people. The difference in our seven children, who came from the same gene pool, astounds me. I love each individual. But, while valuing their uniqueness, I also sought to counter the selfishness with which every human struggles. The family provided a place where our kids could develop as individuals while also learning that the world consisted of more than their personal wants and needs.

The world totes the value of independence and autonomy. Jesus displayed something different with His followers. Instead of putting Himself first, He washed His disciples’ dirty feet — even the feet of Judas. His ways look upside down to the world’s ideas of dealing with each other, such as to be first, you must be last; you shouldn’t seek to be served, but to serve. He instructs us to forgive seventy times seven, turn the other cheek when hurt by another, and give up our coat when asked. 

Not one single aspect of these commands comes naturally to any of us. Jesus knew we needed the Holy Spirit and a lot of practice to live this way. And He gave us the perfect garden to cultivate these upside down principles. The family.

Family Life

Family life provides endless opportunities to live for others. As parents, we work on the perfect training ground, not only for our own hearts, but also our children’s.

Fruitfulness in a family, just as in a garden, results from fertilizing, watering, and weed-pulling. Does that sound like a lot of work? Well, that’s because it is back-breaking, blister-producing, sweat-dripping hard work. But the beautiful fruit that grows from this labor is out of this world. No better environment for producing disciples of Jesus exists than the Christian family. 

Family-centered life offers the security our kids long for. It provides a family tribe that cheers for them. Who defends them. Who forgives them. Who pats them on the back and tells them they did a good job. Who surrounds them when they fail and encourages them to try again. Who get mad at someone who wrongs them. Who protects them and helps them and laughs with them — and AT them as well, which helps them not take themselves too seriously.

Family-centered life cultivates the seedbed for our kids to grow. It provides a solid foundation from which they can launch. It offers a safe place to return to when they need to repair what the world has broken. It supplies a microscope to examine the contrary-to-Jesus teachings they hear. It offers a knowledge base of scripture and truth to counter the enemy’s lies that says they need to find their own truth. 

Everyday life makes it difficult to see the rare beauty of a family-centered life amongst the dirty dishes and the squabbles over what belongs to whom. But I encourage you to grab a cup of coffee, sit back, and consider as you read all the beautiful results that can blossom in our kids' lives when they have the privilege of enjoying a family-centered life.

Family: the Great Adventure

I adore adventure. I’ve traveled around the world, hiked the Grand Canyon, and crossed the border into some pretty scary areas on mission trips. But my grandest adventure has been raising our family. My husband and I worked hard to cultivate a culture all our own. Each kid’s first identity was as a member of our family. They securely belonged with their people, who loved them because of and in spite of all that they were.

Don’t we all want that? I don’t believe they would ever have discovered that security centered on themselves. But along with security, they received more benefits as we taught them what they needed for a successful life. Let me give you a few examples.

Benefits of the Family-Centered Life

Teaches Gratitude

Family-centered life cultivates gratefulness. At first it might look like teaching our kids to use please and thank you. Those simple phrases subtly teach them that entitlement doesn’t exist. I taught our kids that as members of our family, we don’t assume our own needs are paramount over anyone else's. Manners matter and honor those we live with. Therefore we don’t demand. If we desire something, we ask and say please. 

In the same way, if someone gives us something, we express gratitude with a thank you. Appreciation to their own family goes a long way toward teaching our kids that others matter.

I not only taught my kids to use “the magic words” but made sure I used them as well. I demonstrated the behavior I expected of them. Even when I issued a command that didn’t have an option, I said please.

As the kids grew up, I helped them focus on expressing gratitude to one another and to be thankful to the Lord for all He provided. 

Help Kids see Beyond Themselves

The two-year old mindset never disappears. I still fight my own internal urge to want what I want, when I want it, exactly as my heart desires. I control and hide it better, but self-centeredness never really departed. Maybe you are more mature than me.

We all need help seeing past the end of our own noses. Human sin nature requires great force of will to think about others when our own feelings and ideas stand front and center. Self-sacrifice for the good of someone else requires a lot of Jesus and a load of self control.

Family life can impart this skill. Think about how motherhood teaches us selflessness. We give up sleep to feed the baby or tend to the sick child. We ignore our own hunger to make sandwiches for the kids first. We don’t buy the new shoes so we can pay the orthodontist.

I know all those lay-myself-down actions reflected my Savior. Of course, His attitude always matches the love of the action, while complaints and frustration often accompanied mine. I’m still working on my attitude.

For our children, we instill the ability to see past their own needs by pointing out the needs of others. Can they share the toy with their little sister? Why don’t we watch the movie Dad enjoys this time? Why don’t you choose the restaurant your brother likes, just to be nice to him? This is especially important for the baby of the family to practice, since they can become quite accustomed to everyone deferring to them.

Each thinking-about-someone-else opportunity enables them to do another, other-thinking action. It requires strength of character to consider others as more important than yourself, and strength comes from repeated use of that muscle.

We repeated often, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” (Philippians 2:3-4 ESV) 

When we raise our kids in a family-centered life, they have the opportunity to practice thinking about others every day of the week. 

Teaches Kindness

From the vitriol on social media to road rage, we observe the harm that comes when we don’t consider others. That must be why we hear the mantra, “Be kind,” all around us. Kindness blesses everyone. 

But why should we be kind? The Christian family teaches not only the what of being kind, but also the why. We should be kind because Jesus demonstrates His loving kindness to us. And we continue that by being kind first to the people we live with. Then we export that to friends and strangers outside the family.

So that is the big vision of why considering others matters. But think about the warmth, joy, and camaraderie built in a home where kindness dwells. How much more enjoyable to live there! 

Kind responses when the opposite is deserved do not come naturally. They require repeated practice, and I can think of no better opportunity to learn that than in sibling relationships. An old preacher once said, “You don’t know if you have long-suffering until you’ve been long-bothered.” And when kids share rooms and toys, they will experience long-bothered. When competing desires cause arguments, they can learn how to defer, take turns, and consider others' interests ahead of their own.

Teaches Friendship Skills

Helping my children learn to be each other’s friend seemed like climbing Mt. Everest. I figured I’d either stand at the summit in triumph or die in the effort.

Now, watching my adult kids hang out or travel together rewards me like an unexpected dividend on a savings account I doubted would grow. Just as saving money requires denying myself a purchase to deposit the money instead, training friendship skills amongst the variety of humans in my family required small, consistent, sometimes painful efforts, repeated over and over. 

They learned the concept of empathy long before they knew the word. Sibling relationships offer the perfect opportunity to learn how to consider what the other person feels and to try to imagine how something affects them. The elusive ability to place yourself in someone else’s shoes gives you the golden key to being a good friend. 

The family-centered mindset meant we valued the cohesiveness of our family unit, and that trickled down to caring for each individual relationship. Those people skills benefit them in adulthood in their own families and workplaces.

Teaches Obedience

Obedience: Not a popular word anymore because it sounds dictatorial and patriarchal. And if you grew up in an unhealthy family, where someone wielded “obey your parents” like a club over your head, I am so sorry. Distortion and deception are Satan’s signature moves. 

It grieves my heart to hear how destructively the enemy has twisted a principle the Lord meant for our good. 

Let me explain why teaching obedience matters. The beauty and happiness of our family-centered life depended upon my husband and I obeying the Lord. God’s commands changed how we treated each other and how we loved and valued our children. Yes, we obeyed haltingly and incompletely. We messed up and hurt one another. But we kept coming back and trying again.

Our desire to obey Jesus, do what He said, confess when we messed up, apologize to those we hurt, forgive those who hurt us, and wake up to try again the next day displayed the Gospel in technicolor reality. Our children saw our sins up close and personal. But they saw the life Jesus supplies as we kept following Him. 

We needed to obey Jesus to keep going.

We also desired our children to grow into men and women who obeyed the Lord and followed wherever He led. We taught them to obey us so they learned how to obey God. The family, with its beautiful system of Dad, Mom, and kids, supplies ample opportunity to learn obedience. We didn’t explain every command. We didn’t justify every rule. “This is how our family does it,” was often the reason for our patterns.

I trained my children to obey me. Now grown and on their own, they have the ability to obey the voice of their Heavenly Father. I prepared them, as best I could, to follow their loving Heavenly Father who rarely gives explanations for commands that might seem opposite to common sense.

As adults, they make the choice to say yes or no to Him. They will need strength to obey God in a world that tilts further off its axis every day. As they now make their own decisions, I know they not only learned the difficult skill of obedience, but they also saw the value of the fruit that came in their own family as we obeyed Jesus and loved one another.

The Beauty of Family-Centered Life is God’s Plan

Our God works generationally. His plan always includes the expansion of the gospel through the family. A favorite scripture, that inspired my parenting comes from Psalm 78:

Psalm 78:3-8: things that we have heard and known, that our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, but tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the LORD, and his might, and the wonders that he has done.

He established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children, that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments;

The journey of living a family-centered life constituted our greatest adventure, and the generational impact continues as our children facilitate their own, beautiful, family-centered life. The value of that dividend is beyond counting.

Family-centered life provides security and identity for our kids.

Family-centered life allows the opportunity to talk about Jesus and tell how He works in our lives.

Family-centered life gives space to teach kids Biblical truth, love them sacrificially, and help them love each other sacrificially.

Then they are prepared to go love the world that way.