I used to have this app on my phone called Legacy Countdown. It was literally a countdown clock to remind me how much time I had left before my kids graduated high school. There’s nothing like knowing how little time remains to ensure you don’t waste it.
Deciding where to invest all those minutes and hours is hard, especially when you start without a plan. When my first daughter was just a baby, I enrolled her in Music Together, Mother’s Morning Out, and a Friday morning play group in our neighborhood.
By age three, we had added dance classes to the mix.
Then she started school, and I realized we needed an art enrichment class and after-school tutoring. In another year, we’d begin playing soccer, start a book club, and join Girl Scouts. I thought that more stuff gave our lives more meaning.
I was WRONG.
More stuff just made our lives more complicated.
I didn’t want my life to be just a countdown clock to the weekend or vacation or my kid’s graduation, so what did I do? I made a date with about a hundred other things.
Let’s be real— Isn’t it amazing how much you can accomplish when you’re in a pinch? Deadlines are my best friend, too. Deadlines hold my hand and encourage me to move with direction and purpose. And that’s what the Legacy App did for me. It put that hard deadline—the empty nest—front and center.
There’s a question we often ask ourselves when we reach a certain age, and it’s this: If I could go back in time, what advice would I give my younger self?
Maybe I would tell myself to slow down time. To enjoy the little things. To embrace the hard things. Maybe I would tell myself that all that extra “stuff” we did wouldn’t really matter in the long run.
But the reality is this: I can’t go back in time and tell my younger self anything.
What I can do, however, is set my future self up for success. My future self wants a life of meaning and purpose. My future self wants kids who are self sufficient, who harbor strong convictions, and who embrace life with their own visions of what the future holds. Looking forward gives us the ammunition we need to do something concrete and real.
Once I realized our family had a filled-up life that didn’t make us feel full at all, we started making some meaningful vows:
In the future:
We will not say yes simply because we have a fear of missing out.
We will not say yes because we’re afraid to be home alone with our kids.
We will not justify decisions to match our circumstances.
We will only add things to the family calendar that reflect our values.
We knew we wanted our kids to be creative problem solvers, effective mitigators for conflict resolution, and strong adults who could deal with disappointment. We wanted to encourage our kids to pursue the things they loved, and we also wanted to protect the time we had with them here at home.
Obviously, we had to say goodbye to some very good things. We had to make some hard choices.
One of the ways we did this by taking a season off. Knowing we would have time together in the near future sustained us when things were crazy, and everybody was eating dinner at a different time and no one was ever all in the car together. We knew it was for a season, and that made it bearable. For example, as much as we loved sports, we didn’t miss church to play them on Sundays. The down-time allowed us to catch our breath and explore what matters in the context of the most important relationships in our lives.
Another thing we did was empower our kids to choose for themselves those things that made them feel most alive. One summer, our older son obtained his private pilot’s license, and our younger son attended a summer camp for entrepreneurs. Our oldest daughter went on mission trips, and our youngest learned how to cook.
Over the years, I’ve been paying attention to the stories that make us who we are. Memories from childhood shape our worldview and influence our choices. In the future, I hope my kids will remember their past with a fondness that will carry them into their own preferred future. I hope they will feel equipped to find meaning not only in the work they choose to do but also in their relationships—both with people and with God. I hope they know that their past does not define them and that the future is filled with opportunity.
Mostly, I hope they enjoy today. It is a gift, and it is a responsibility. Steward it well, my friends.
“Science shows that the secret to high performance isn’t our biological drive or our reward-and-punishment drive, but our third drive—our deep-seated desire to direct our own lives, to extend and expand our abilities, and to live a life of purpose”
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How are you creating more meaning in your family? Please share in the comments below.