SACRIFICE

Being an avid outdoorsman, once we had children I wanted to share everything I loved and knew about it with them. Hunting, fishing, and camping were my top three pastimes in the outdoors. Being a bit of a type A personality, I like things a certain way and make plans to guarantee things happen the way I want. I’m also a slow learner. Those two things combined can create frustration when it comes to young kids.

One of the first outings I took them on was fishing - I had all of the gear ready, including bait, and plenty of snacks. My plan was to fish for crappies, an aggressive, feisty fish, which can be a good size for little kids to catch. After getting both boys set up, I got my fishing line in the water. Immediately after getting my line in the water, one needed more bait and the other one’s line was tangled. After getting them set up again, I was back to fishing. As you can imagine, the previous series of events continued until one was bored and the other had to go the bathroom. So, we packed up our gear and headed back to shore. In my eyes, it was a failure -nobody caught a fish, and I was pretty sure they did not have fun.

On future outings, I would bring just one at a time thinking that would help…but it didn’t. I could see their lack of enthusiasm growing. Eventually, I learned it was my selfish desire wanting them to catch big fish, and me trying to fish at the same time didn’t help the problem either.  

I committed to sacrifice my fishing, focus on smaller, easy to catch fish, and teaching my sons the how to’s. It was an instant success! They were catching fish not much bigger than their tiny hands, but we all had a blast! It was a whirlwind of putting bait on and taking fish off hooks. Many times, we had to head back in because we ran out of bait and snacks…most times with smiles on everyone’s faces!

On a few occasions, we all got what we wanted

From then on, I decided to sacrifice taking part in some of my favorite pastimes and instead focus on their happiness and success. Imagine if you were the Father of the entire world.

John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.