You Are Building Something: Encouraging Young Families
Picture yourself in your elder years looking back on your lifetime. What do you want life to look like once you’ve reached your long-term goals? I recently went through this vision casting exercise with my coach. The first thing I described was my husband by my side. Second, I laid out what I wanted for my adult children: their own faith, fulfillment, and strong relationships. I thought about my legacy — what will I leave behind? Will parts of my influence be measurable? Will I hear back from clients, students, and others in my sphere of influence that my work made a difference?
My coach, Diana, paused to reflect on how many people not only include their family in their vision for the future, but immediately prioritize them, followed by goals of legacy and personal achievement. It is a good and God-honoring desire to seek strong and healthy relationships with one’s spouse and one’s children. The desire to be an excellent partner and parent is noble. Work in itself is a gift from the Lord, given to mankind before the fall. And yet, our hoped-for outcome of strong, fulfilling relationships and a meaningful legacy can live in tension with the felt stress of daily struggles. The days are long but the years are short.
So many young families struggle under the daily weight of building fulfilling careers, strong marriages, and healthy families. Are your clients experiencing this burden? Are you?
Last year, my aunt said something I have clung to dearly. I was managing a preschooler and a toddler who wanted to run and touch everything at a nice hotel breakfast, barely able to listen to the adult conversation as my husband shared updates on our careers and family. Aunt Cindy paused, looked at us both, and said “you are building something.” She went on to reference her own years of establishing her career and her family. Her vantage point today is not from the early building years. She has a strong marriage, beautiful adult daughters who have made her proud and has helped hundreds of patients as a nurse, and hundreds of nurses through training. While she still continues to pour her heart and talent into those around her, she is at the same time experiencing the benefit of what she has built.
I remind myself of her words often and seek to share that encouragement with other young families in my sphere of influence.
As I read another story, reiterate the importance of brushing teeth, search down a missing ballet shoe, and try to bring the gospel to breaking up a sibling battle, I tell myself “You are building something.”
When I see a newly married couple seeking low cost date nights to fit the budget or an engaged couple prioritizing premarital counseling, I remind them, they are building something
“You are building something,” to the coach taking that first clarity call. To the coach transitioning to coaching other coaches. To the counselor seeking a specialized certification or to discover their niche. To the presenter getting up at an AACC conference to give their first workshop.
Counselors, you are leading by example as you establish your own healthy relationship patterns and help your clients do the same. When your clients come to you for relationship help or parent coaching, you are giving them the tools for their own cathedrals. The vision casting you provide helps them write the blueprints. The processes, systems, and habits you help them create are their foundations.
When you encourage couples and parents through a caregiving relationship, you are building the most precious of things, second only to our relationship with our heavenly father. Perhaps the “building something” mantra will serve one of your client’s lives, or perhaps you, in your own life through this season.
