It turns out that having a personal blog is going to take more brain power than I first realized.

But it’s all good.

I’ve been thinking all week about what to post about. With Christmas this week — tomorrow — I figured I would write a little something with a holiday slant.

I kicked several ideas around in my head, but most of them ended up in my mental wastebasket for various reasons.

With Christmas upon us, a lot of focus and pressure is placed on gifts, I am reminded of something I learned in my Family Communications class in college:

“Your kids don’t need what you didn’t have.”

As parents, we have a tendency to work hard to provide for our kids what we think we missed out on. Maybe it was piano lessons. Maybe it was the best bicycle at the store. Or maybe it was the latest video game.

Whatever that thing was, your kids don’t need it.

What kids do need, however, is your love; and even that varies from child to child as each kid is unique and speaks love in a different language.

It’s easy to be swept up in smothering our children with gifts for Christmas. Like my friend Phil Schneider said on a recent ChurchMag Podcast (and I paraphrase):

“I would rather buy my kid a gift on a Tuesday because I love her, than buy a bunch of crap on Christmas because I feel like I have to.”

What our kids need and desire the most — even beyond a gift given on a Tuesday — also happens to be what costs us the most.

Our time.

Our energy.

Our attention.

Our love.

And while piano lessons, bicycles and the latest video game may provide a catalyst to those ends, we must not lose focus on what our kids need the most.

You.

// Photo Credit: Amani Hasan via Compfight cc