Priorities and Clearing Things Up
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I was listening to a song the other day and it talked about the big three TV networks back in the day, ABC, CBS, and NBC. There were just three. You might catch a fourth signal somewhere back. I'm talking like 60s here. Now, I was traveling the other day. If you scroll through, it's like you could spend 10 minutes just seeing how many channels there are. It's amazing. That's just reflective of the endless options we have in life across the board.

I'm John Fuller with Dr. Danny Huerta, who heads up our parenting team. And Danny, how in the world can we discern what's most important with a simple little word called no to these thousands of channels or these opportunities? Last time you shared about kind of some value calls you made. Yeah, it's a hard one, John. I mean, it's never an exact science.

But it feels good to be able to say no and to prioritize. And you'll recognize how your relationship, especially with your spouse or your kids, benefit from it.

And as you practice learning what a healthy no is, healthy yes is, and practice managing the emotions that come with that, because you may feel guilt saying, no, I can't do that. And maybe there's some extra project you could take on or some extra money you could earn. And in the moment, you may have certain feelings. You'll work through those and you'll see the benefits of

of making the conscious decision, I am going to invest and prioritize in this relationship with my daughter, with my son, with my family, with my spouse. I remember early in our marriage, there were some potential outings with guys, with guy friends.

And there was a lot of temptation to say yes, to continue that. They're going, hey, we're going to do this. We're going to do that. And to prioritize time with Heather, she appreciated that. She didn't expect it or demand it, but it showed to her that I valued her. And it's good to balance things out. I think a key takeaway from this show and the last one, John, is going to be

How do we balance out our life well? Yeah. And it requires wisdom and a lot of prayer. And I want to just emphasize something you mentioned last time. That is, it also requires discussing the things with your spouse. Yeah. Talking to your spouse about where we're at this season of life. What are the priorities? Now, we're going to get into a clip from Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. Jim talked to Christy about managing priorities and figuring those out and talking

He also talked about clutter. And I want to just say, I don't like talking to my wife about clutter because she's

kind of hyper declutter right now. And I kind of like memories. So you can just kind of listen in and see what Christy says about how to talk through clutter as a parent with your spouse. Let's go ahead and listen. How can we best determine what our family's priorities should be? I think you've honed it for yourself. How have you applied that to the rest of the family and how did they buy in? How did they buy in? That's a good question. Well,

we really prayed about it. Both Steve and I prayed about like, what are our priorities? What does that look like? And so we try to make sure we check in with each other a lot. But when it comes to my home and since the wedding was at our home, that's really what it came down to is I want my home to be a place like you had said at one point of Shalom. I want my home to be a place of peace. Home is,

really is important because we live in a crazy world and so we need to have a place where we can take a deep breath. Children, I think, love that. They don't know how to express it, but children thrive in that kind of environment. They really do. They really do. And so I think that's when, I think when you feel tension as parents, we can

tell when there's tension, kids are acting up and it can be for a variety of things. But I found that it's oftentimes the busyness that we're allowing into our schedule. And so that's been a big thing for us is we've really, we always look at our calendar. We try to figure out like what needs to be on our calendar right now. And so we pray over that and we talk to the kids about it. So an example is Awana is a wonderful ministry that's all about Bible memorization.

But for us in this season, it was falling on a bad night. We already had another ministry happening that night. And so we just had it. We prayed about it. We talked to our kids about it. And I just make sure that Bible memory is a priority in the rest of our schedule and the rest of our day, which is easier since we do homeschool. But you've got to pay attention to there are good things and good seasons, but you need to save your yes for what's best. Yeah, that's really, really good and wise.

Decluttering is a big issue. I think your point in the book is clear the clutter. I always hear clear the gutter. Oh, yeah.

Jump up on the ladder. Get that ladder. I actually took care of that and put one of those screens over it. I don't have to get up there anymore. When Trent left, I was like, uh-oh, what am I going to do? But clear the clutter. How do we go about doing that? I think your grandmother had a good insight for you. I love that. What did Grandma have to say? Oh, well, it was more what she left behind. So my grandma had been very organized. She introduced me to my first labeler.

And so she had been very organized. I had a love for labeling early in my life. The punch label. The punch letter. The punch one. Boom, boom. Yes. Yeah, we had those. Oh, they were everywhere. And I still find them in the few things that I have of hers, like little labels on the bottom. Pens. Pencils. Oh, all of the things.

But the problem was is later in her life, she became a hoarder. So an organized hoarder. Oh, wow, one for the other. But we're talking like you open a closet and she could fit more in the closet than any other human could because she was organized and hoarding. So when she passed, it left quite...

you know, quite a burden on the family. And so I remember that when she was, her cancer had come back and my uncle had called to tell me like, you know, just so you know, it's worse than, than you think it is. And I thought he was talking about the cancer and he wasn't, he was talking about the state of her home. And so when I got there, it was, it was,

It was really sad. It was sad to see just how much she had accumulated. And then so we went and we visited and had a great time. But it was after she passed that I came out to help my uncle kind of try to get the house ready to sell that. I mean, we had to, I knew the guest room had a bed. Let's just put it like that. And so we had to do, it took us a day to get to the bed. Okay.

to try to get a pathway to uncover the bed. So what I've learned is that clutter really, it's a symptom of a lot of things. So clutter is a symptom. It's a symptom of stress, of overwhelm. For her, it was her health. And she just kept putting things away. But it can be busyness in our life. A lot of things we already talked about. But one of the things that it's kind of tweaked how I view things is,

And that is, what are the items I'm choosing to have in my home? And is it something that I think my kids are like, do I need it? Do I use it for right now?

And if I'm putting it away or storing it, is it something my kids are actually going to need? So sometimes we don't think about the burden that we're actually, it's almost a generational thing where now we're passing this on to someone else. But it's really helped me to identify things a little differently. Well, and that's not an uncommon thing, hoarding. I mean, I hear about it often. There's shows on TV about it. But I think people, we struggle to let go of stuff, which is an indication of other things going on like that.

Oh, yeah. Good stuff. And Danny, as we get older, it's easy to inherit parents' belongings. Raising my hand because my dad passed away last fall. We drove up to Wisconsin with the pickup truck. We loaded the back end of the truck. We brought it all home. And I thought, now what? Just the back end of the pickup truck. Now

Now, I haven't even gotten a chance to organize my garage and now I have piles of stuff for my parents' house. What's that about? So there's a lot going on here. Give me some counsel. What should I do? How do I manage this?

Yeah, that's a hard one. First of all, I want to encourage parents that are aging to go through your things. And we've talked about this with my parents, with Heather's parents as well. And in the counseling sessions, have talked about one gift you can give your kids is go through your things, talk to them while you're alive, just through the things that you want to pass along and have them choose while you're there. So those things are clearly labeled.

And then make a point to go through your things and get rid of what is extra. That'll be such a gift to your family so that they don't have to sort through that. But I just want to say, amen, amen, amen. So my dad was kind of a hoarder and he just had stuff all over the house. And

The grandkids took some of it after his funeral, but there's still a house full of stuff. And my mom is looking at it thinking, I don't know what to do with it. And then you feel bad throwing it away. Yeah, yeah. So in a follow-up visit, she's like, here, you gave us this present 17 years ago, and I have your name on it. So you get to take it home. It's like, I don't want that. I bought it for you. Yes. So yes, older parents...

or cluttered parents, do your kids a favor and just get rid of it now. Yeah. So families have actually taken action on that and have sold many things. And there are actually people that can come in and help you sell it. They take a percentage of what you've sold, but then take that money and invest it and give it, have it there as an inheritance for the family as a financial boost to wherever they're at, because then it lowers their stress. Now, if you find yourself in a situation where you're having to

to go through parents' belongings that have passed away, and there are a lot of belongings there. Take it a chunk at a time. You're going to need to be patient with each other because of probably several siblings going through things, and then you're trying to sort through all that. Hopefully there's a will to help guide that a bit. But then if you find it all in your garage, I would encourage you to set a goal of a few boxes,

And then move to the next boxes. And if you can't decide on that box, don't punt it for later. It'll just continually be something in your way. So make decisions while you're there. Be ready, be rested so you can make decisions. Even if it's one box.

get that and make a point to, in two years, I'm going to go through us or in one year and take it one little step at a time. Otherwise, it feels completely overwhelming. Okay. So for many years, Danny, this feels like a counseling session. So I'll continue just a little bit more. For many years, things were tight. We had a lot of kids. We had five kids. And so Dina, she's ready to start clearing stuff out. We got rid of the high chair and the pack and play and the car seats and all that.

And then we adopted and we needed all of that back. So sometimes you can't really win and you just have to deal with stuff. I think you said this last time, there are seasons. And so maybe it's a season where you do have a little clutter, but do what you can and get a hold of the chaos. Listen, Christy Clover's book,

MOM, Master Organizer of Mayhem. She talks about this in the book. And as you heard today, she's got ideas. So this is an encouraging resource. Get a copy of it when you make a donation of any amount to the ministry. Details are in the show notes. And if you're wondering...

Boy, we tried to, as Christy spoke about earlier, instill a really solid faith in my kids, and they seem to be wobbling. How am I doing? Is it my fault? We have some encouragement for you in our parenting assessment.

it's maybe a 10 or 15 minute investment for you. You take one of these, I think you said last time, Danny, one per child. You take this survey, this assessment, and it's going to tell you how you're doing, areas of improvement, and give you some prayer points, frankly. And John, a lot of times assessments like these cost money. As a counselor, I use assessments in my practice to have a starting point within whoever comes into the office, whether it's a family or individual.

And we designed this with our research team and a third-party research team that helped us create validity so that when you go in there, you're getting results that are going to be helpful, but they're research-based and statistically solid for you. And just know it's free. We wanted to have this be a free resource, but also one that's meaningful. So you get seven pages of great content that helps you have some practical starting points, biblical foundations to those, and a further understanding of these seven traits that

that are based off of the authoritative parenting style. A lot of people talk about parenting styles. The ideal one for the past 60 years that have been found through research and the benefit to child development is the authoritative parenting style. And that's the culmination of these seven traits.

And so this is a great starting point to start with the assessment. Check it out. Go to the link and start from there. And then you go on a journey of great content here at Focus on the Family. I love the way you're wired and how deep you can go on some of this stuff. You've got a great team, and we're here for you. We want to help you. So please stop by our website and chase the notes there. The links are there for that parenting assessment, to make a donation, to get Christy's book, and so much more.

Next time, we'll hear about something called the Grateful Game. For now, on behalf of Dr. Danny Huerta and the team, thanks for listening to the Focus on the Family Parenting Podcast.

If the fights with your spouse have become unbearable, if you feel like you can't take it anymore, there's still hope. Hope Restored Marriage Intensives have helped thousands of couples like yours. Our biblically-based counseling will help you find the root of your problems and face them together. Call us at 1-866-875-2915. We'll talk with you, pray with you, and help you find out which program will work best. That's 1-866-875-2915.

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