I’ve always admired the organized and purposeful guys in my life. You know, they go to bed right after dinner, get up at 4 a.m., have memorized some Scripture, ran six miles, and solved three business problems before my alarm goes off. I can set my watch by where they will be every day.
I used to really strive to be like those guys, but it’s hard to get up at 4 when you go to bed at midnight. And with seven kids in the house and all the activities, it seemed like there was plenty to throw me off any attempt I made to hit their organization level. Plus I found out for me too much organization in my life actually made me grouchy and irritable. Everyone around me was in the way of my tasks and structure which made me resent their intrusions into my precious schedule.
But in the process of all my striving to be like them, I did find one thing I could do that made a real difference in helping me to be my best as a husband and a father. Now I’m still trying to master this one, too, but the progress I have made here has really made an impact.
It’s called intentionality.
Intentionality is the quality of mental states (e.g., thoughts, beliefs, desires, hopes) that consists in their being directed toward some object or state of affairs.
In this case, the object is our spouses and kids.
The difference between intentionality and organization is intentionality is not so rigid and uniform. It’s not about a schedule (although it may result in something being scheduled). It’s about intent and action.
For example, one of my intentions in life is to be involved in what my kids are involved in. Someone taught me early in fatherhood to look for what my kids were doing and join them in it.
So when my daughters were younger, they would play dollhouse. I didn’t know how to play dollhouse, but they were really good at it. They had all these children and parents and names for everyone (I never could remember the names. I think they changed the names on me, but I couldn’t prove it). It wasn’t on the schedule but when I saw them playing dollhouse I would sit down and enter in their play.
That got boring so I encouraged them to play sports. Much more fun than dollhouse. What was going to be my intention there? I liked coaching so I decided I would join their world by helping coach their teams.
Sometimes I intended to do things, and I didn’t follow through very well. Date nights with my wife would be an example of one intention in which I could have been more consistent. But guess what? Because I had the intention, we had many more date nights than if the intention were not there at all.
Intentionality can influence our lives and the lives of our family in so many ways. As I am writing this, so many intentions come to mind:
I saw the effect of anger with my children and so I made the intention to never yell at them and if I did, my intention was to go back and ask forgiveness.
Someone taught me once how damaging it is to my marriage to joke about my wife in public, so I made the intention to not make jokes at her expense.
I have realized over time that I really like to talk but that listening is more important so I have made the intention with my family – and others – to try to listen more and value what others are saying.
Intentionality is the beginning of real change. Not all our intentions will come to pass perfectly but if we are intentional spouses and parents, good things will develop.
Because we rarely have bad intentions. We don’t say to ourselves, “I am going to be mean to my kids” or “I intend to not be involved in my family.” No, our intentions are good and when we spend time in intentionality, our lives move in a positive direction and our spouse and family benefit.
I may never get up at 4 a.m. – actually as I’m getting older, that possibility is more likely – and those buddies of mine will always be more organized than I am, but I believe all of us can practice intentionality with our family. And those intentions will become habits that will bless our family for a lifetime.
