I was reading Uncommon by Tony Dungy this summer just prior to the wedding of my daughter, Kim. I came upon this list at the end of Part II of his book (see previous blog post) and I thought it had some wonderful reminders for all of us.
During the time of thinking about walking my “baby” down the aisle on August 29th I found myself doing a lot of “self-study” in terms of this list. How did Joey and I do in building memories for our family? What kind of examples were we for my daughter? Did I show my girls how much I loved my wife by how I treated her? Was I careful about what I said and did? Did I write notes to my daughter to encourage and bless her? There are many other questions that came to mind and I certainly did not get a perfect score in each category. However, I am thankful to say that I can look back and be thankful that Joey and I as a team did take our parenting role very seriously. We realized that our example would be critical and would impact our daughter’s character and the kind of young man our daughter would choose to marry.
I am also blessed that I was able to generate a long list of great memories. I am thankful that I now have lots of additional memories from an amazing wedding weekend. The wonderful thing about building memories is that they can last so long and will impact our children and potentially their children. In the last Insider I finished by saying, “The priorities we set and the lives we live do indeed touch the next generation”. During my time of self-study this truth once again jumped out at me.
I am thankful to say that our daughter married a wonderful young man who truly loves her. We are thrilled to have added Dan Cammarata to our family. We are also blessed to have connected with Dan’s parents and grandparents. There are no guarantees today, but with Dan’s love for our daughter, and the example of positive marriages that both Dan and Kim had in their families we feel very good about the potential for their marriage to be a good one that impacts others in a positive way.
I encourage all of our Smart & Good Team to take the time to regularly do a “self-study” based on the list from Tony Dungy. It is a great place to start and you could obviously revise to make it even more relevant to you and your family. The investments you make in your marriage and children will pay great dividends.
