Her "big" party

Today was the day that my daughter had her "big" party. I shared last month about her graduation and at dinner that night, she told everyone that this was her "small" party and that they were all invited to her bigger party later. She invited all her friends. She's developing a bad habit of inviting people to things she hasn't discussed with us either. She'd tell everyone at church, "let's go to lunch. My dad is treating." LOL It's funny now, but embarrassing when it happens.

Anyways, I came down with a bad case of the chills last night. I was struck down by the flu. I didn't think I would make it to the party today. And to be honest, that wasn't such a bad thing to me. Spending a few hours with a bunch of four to seven year old girls was not my ideal way of spending an afternoon. But I got up today and felt better. Not good, but better than yesterday. And my wife was kind of making me feel bad about not going. So I decided to toughen up. I still limped around because I was still in pain. But I went. Sitting there in the playhouse where they have all these inflatable balloon bouncers, I looked around and counted four men in a crowd of about thirty parents. Great. Made me feel even better. But we made it through and to be honest, it wasn't that bad. I was glad I went. She was very happy. In fact, she stood up and gave a long speech to thank her friends for coming. I think she gets that from me. LOL

At prayer last night, aunty Mine talked about legacy. What is our legacy? She quoted Solomon about how our legacy should be to bring people to God. Then I was reminded about David's Psalm about how children are blessings from God. Psalm 127 says that children are a heritage from God. How blessed "whose quiver is full of them." Talk about legacy. The beginning of he psalm says, "in vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat." In essence, David is saying that we're putting our emphasis on the wrong things. We spend all our time at the office or at our careers, yet we should really be spending time with out greatest responsibility, our children.

That kind of knocked me back a bit. I had always been of the belief that by earning a good living, I was doing the best for my children. But here was the Bible telling us something different. I'm reminded of a situation that happened to one of my brothers. He was offered a position where he would earn significantly more than he was at his present position. He turned it down. I asked him why. He said, "well, the first thing is I would spend a lot less time with my kids." That said a lot. He's right. When we die, it won't matter how many hours we put in, that company is going to find a replacement for you and keep right on going. What we should be focusing on is our children and the people we love. Are they prepared for the afterlife? Are they prepared to meet Jesus. Time spent with our children is time wisely invested. That's why I'm thankful I didn't miss the "big" party today.