Some years ago while I was reading my Bible during the quiet of nap time, (which, if you know me personally, you know that my oldest son has always been a horrible napper, so the fact that I had a quiet nap time to even do this seemed like a miracle), I happened upon this passage:
Praise the Lord. Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who finds great delight in his commands. His children will be mighty in the land; the generations of the upright will be blessed. Wealth and riches are in his house, and his righteousness endures forever. Even in the darkness light dawns for the upright, for the gracious and compassionate and righteous man. Good will come to him who is generous and lends freely, who conducts his affairs with justice. Surely he will never be shaken; a righteous man will be remembered forever. He will have no fear of bad news; his heart is steadfast, trusting in the Lord. His heart is secure, he will have no fear; in the end he will look in triumph on his foes. He has scattered abroad his gifts to the poor, his righteousness endures forever; his horn will be lifted high in honor.
-Psalm 112:1-9
Now, I have read this passage many times before, but reading it as a new mother, with my first son only months old at the time, something burned hot and fierce within me that wanted this passage to be true for our family. A mantra so to speak. I started to think about how as a mother, I have the great responsibility of setting the tone for my home. When I wake up in the morning, each decision I make with how I choose my words, the tone with which I say them, and my actions on behalf of my family, create a certain culture within the 4 walls of our home. Depending on whether I have intentionally chosen joy, or have passively decided to blow with the wind of my negative emotions, the environment of my home always flows from me. Like an ice cream cone on a sweltering day that is quickly melting down the sides and spattering onto the cement, my attitude quickly runs down from me to each member of my family. If I’m not careful, our days can become chaotic and negative before we even eat breakfast. Everyone has bad days, even bad weeks, but if we’re not careful, those bad days can turn into bad years, which can turn into a lifestyle that is less than ideal. In the raw first months of brand-new motherhood, this truth was staring me back in the face, making me feel undone and vulnerable. This passage above in Psalms was like an iron rod being placed in my spine, like gasoline being poured straight into my heart, igniting a desire to build our family on the Rock. To have our foundation be solid, not shifting like sand.
This is when I had the idea to create what I named “The Yurko Family Pillars”- the non-negotiables of our family; the things that no matter what was happening to us, in us, or around us, would always be true about how we behaved. I picked 4 of them, because that seemed like an easy metaphor as there are generally 4 walls to a house, so I imagined there to be 4 pillars that are holding up our home and the culture we are building within it each day. I started by gathering scriptures that I wanted to be true of our family. After some months of gathering my thoughts, I created the 4 main pillars as follows. Beside each pillar, I created a saying that describes simply what it entails, so that my toddler could memorize them easily.
GOD. “We always follow God in everything we do.”
STEWARDSHIP. “We are nice to the things God has given us.”
INTEGRITY. “We always do the right thing, no matter what!”
HONOR. “We are nice to other people.”
Now, these 4 pillars might seem simplistic, and their descriptions certainly are, but that was intentional. I wanted them to be broad enough so that any and every situation we might come across could fit into one of these 4 pillars. My husband and I have found them to be very easily applied in almost every learning moment we have with our son. I will give you some examples for each pillar.
God: Used when asked by our son why we go to church, why we pray, why we go to BSF every week, etc. Children watch everything we do, and our son has started asking “why” to almost everything lately. This pillar is #1 for a reason. The other 3 don’t have any true meaning for us apart from this one.
Stewardship: We have used this one when our toddler doesn’t want to eat healthy food, or doesn’t want to nap or go to bed at a good hour. We explain to him that we are being good stewards of our bodies by taking care of them with these things. We used this one when my husband sold his truck in order to eliminate that monthly payment when our second son was on the way. Our toddler had always known that to be daddy’s vehicle, so when it disappeared he noticed and he did not like it. By using our pillars, we were able to teach him that we were being good stewards of our money. He is too young to know what all that entails, but just having language for him to use makes his little heart feel better about the question he had about daddy’s truck. (We sold this truck about 10 months ago, and my son still talks about how we sold daddy’s truck to be good stewards of our money. How powerful is it, that he already is forming his thoughts based off God’s Word, even before he fully understands all that it means. As he grows, he will already have these truths as anchors in his heart.)
Integrity: I just used this one not even 2 hours ago. We were going on a walk and our toddler was on his bike, coming right for me and the stroller. I quickly moved the stroller out of the way as to avoid a collision, however in doing so the wheels ran right over some big landscaping rocks on the other side. The jolt knocked my glass water bottle right out of the stroller cupholder and (CRASH) right onto the sidewalk, shattering in a million little pieces. I wanted so badly to just pick up the big pieces and continue with our walk. (Those parents who know how insanely hard it is just to… get 2 kids sunscreened, a toddler in a bike helmet and staying put next to you while you get the baby in the stroller when he so badly wants to just start biking away, water for everyone, remember to lock the door, do I have my keys and my phone, ok let’s go before the baby needs to be back for a nap and the toddler gets too hungry to function and everyone loses all of their coping skills… I know you feel my pain when this hydration situation happened only 3 houses into our walk, and I’m all by myself with no husband back-up). Needless to say, it seemed so daunting to turn everyone back around, leave the kids outside while I went in to get brooms and dustpan, haul everything back to the scene of the crime, sweep it all up (while the baby is starting to cry in his stroller alone because everyone left him to go back down the street without him), and then carry it back to our garbage can only to start once again to try and go on this walk in the growing heat, because heaven knows the meltdown that would happen if I told the toddler it was too late to go on this walk now. Phew. I feel exhausted just trying to type all that out! But, as these pillars have become the mantras in my head that I created them to be, I knew I needed to “do the right thing no matter what!” No matter that whole long description of why it was going to be too daunting. No matter that I didn’t even want to go on the walk in the first place, and now there’s this mess to clean up that I didn’t even cause. I had my little guy right next to me looking at what I was going to do. I certainly want him to grow up into a man that cleans up after himself, that doesn’t skimp on the details, that thinks of how his actions, or inactions, could affect others. So, I completely cleaned up the spill, and my son got a lesson in integrity, as there was no one around to even see what was happening. We knew. And in this family we do the right thing no matter what.
Honor: This one is very easy to apply with the age of my oldest, as he is currently learning how to SHARE and OBEY. I’m sure that right there is explanation enough to how this mantra of “we are nice to other people” can apply. We use this one daily. It’s why we have him say “please” when he orders his food. Why he says “thank you” when the cashier gives him a sticker at Target. Why we wave at cars that drive by or say “hello” to people when we pass them on our walks. We want our children to know that in this family we are kind to other people. This pillar also comes into play with material things. The things we have, or the things we come into contact with outside of our home, we need to honor by treating them nicely. When we are out at a restaurant our toddler can’t bang his fork on the table even though he likes the sound not only because it’s annoying to others, but because that table doesn't belong to us, so we need to honor the people who the table belongs to by not damaging it. This might sound like a stretch, but there is a method to my madness here. I don’t want my children growing up to be teenagers who think it’s okay to vandalize property because other kids are doing it and because they haven’t learned to respect other people by respecting the things they’ve made or bought. We want them to learn right now, at the tender age of toddlerdom, that we honor people by respecting their things. Lastly, this pillar gives my husband and I a way to explain to our toddler that he needs to listen and obey us because God tells him he needs to honor his father and mother.
I hope these examples give you a framework of how to create your own family pillars, should you so desire. Begin by writing down what you want your “non-negotiables” to be, and then group those into larger categories. Give each category a name; those will become your “pillars”. Next to each pillar, write down a simple, one-sentence description of what that pillar means. Make sure your description could be easily understood by a young child, especially if you are wanting these pillars to be taught to your kids.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, we can’t expect our kids to abide by these pillars if we as the parents aren’t following them either. Because our family pillars are God, Stewardship, Integrity and Honor, my husband and I have to first make sure we are modeling to our children how to love God and follow Him, how to take care of our bodies and the things we have, how to always do the right thing even when it’s hard, and how to love others the way God would want us to even when it’s not easy. Our modeling of these pillars says way more to our kids than our words ever could, but the layering of our example along with our verbal explanation of why we do these things will help us to intentionally plant good seed in the hearts of our children, that will grow into a harvest once they’re grown.