Round it out

On Mother's Day, Cliff and I chose to participate as a family in Child Dedications. For whatever reason, we waited until Ethan was almost five years old to do this. We had a prep class the week before and made a family video with all the other families to be shown at church during Dedications. During the prep class, the LifeKids Campus Pastor from Oklahoma City said something that caused a shift in my thinking. I had to stop for a moment to let it sink in. At my work we call these " Aha moments." She said that as parents our job is not to teach our children to be well rounded, but to live a passionate life as fully devoted followers of Christ. Literally, everything in that moment became clearer in my life. I knew that my role as a parent was to teach my children to love and obey God, to help them develop a relationship with Him, to teach them the importance of placing him number one.... but all this time in my children's lives and in my own I have sought to be well rounded. This is in fact the very thing I was taught growing up, the same thing my parents were taught by their parents..... and I realized in that moment what I was striving for and what I was teaching my children was an impossible mission. I breathed a huge sigh of relief. My life had just been simplified, brought into focus, and in the following weeks since then, I feel like things that have been cloudy for months have begun to turn clear.
So what does it mean for me to live a life that is not well rounded but passionate and focused in a few major areas, and ulitimately on Christ and developing a relationship with Him?
The first thing that came to mind when I thought about not being well rounded anymore was the bodybuilder from a movie called " The Lady in the Water." Have you seen it? Its an interesting movie, just like many of M. Night Shamalyn' s movies in which all the small, seemingly insignificant things matter and amount to something glorious in the end. IN this particular film there is a man that only lifts weights on one side of his body. He is incredibly lopsided, but his singular focus ultimately leads to something very important and extraordinary. I want to have a singular focus like him. I want to live a life that is important and extraordinary. I want to be a fully devoted follower of Christ, with a heart beating in tune with His purpose- and I want the same for my kids.
Its new territory for me to quit focusing on being well rounded- to not focus on overall perfection....but it is liberating too. I think maybe I have spent so much time on trying to be well rounded that I have missed a piece of that great mission and purpose that God has for my life. I don't want to miss out anymore. I want to live my part extravagently.