Dear Parents, Participation trophies are a frustration for many parents when it comes to sports and activities. We live in a day when people often frown on just giving out trophies to everyone. We want people to earn what they get. We want trophies for people who actually won something. I don’t necessarily disagree with this mentality. We should strive for excellence. We should reward people when they do an excellent job. But sometime excellence gets in the way of doing things. “Anything worth doing, is worth doing poorly.”

My wife said this to me and it caught my attention. Now you might think, “How does that work? He just said we should strive for excellence.” And although that is true, we shouldn’t let excellence get in the way of doing something. Sometimes we think that in order to do something, we have to do it the best. We have to be a semi-pro in order to lead this or that with our family. When we think about exercise in our life, I don’t have to start by running a marathon, or lifting heavy weights on day one. In fact I might only lift 10 lbs for 10 reps and want to take a nap. I might only be able to run just a few feet and then have to walk the rest of the time. All of this is better for me and my health than not doing it at all. Anything worth doing, is worth doing poorly.

We can all look at our lives and have parental guilt about how we are doing as parents. We can struggle with being present in our kids’ lives and not on our cell phone. We can struggle with bringing our stress home from work and putting it on our kids. We can struggle with not taking time to read God’s Word, or not knowing how to pray. I could go on but you get the point. We will always have hard things in our life that we don’t do well with our kids. I know I am not an excellent parent, really none of us are. My prayer for all of us is that we are willing to do anything, even if it is done poorly, because our poorest attempts, when done with Jesus by our side, are so much better than not doing anything at all.

“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

Colossians 3:16-17 ESV

You may not know how to pray like Daniel, or preach like Paul, you may not be loving like Mary or strong like David. But you have something you can offer your kids. You have Jesus. You can share Him with them every day. You can pray even if you don’t do it perfectly. You can be present by putting down your phone more, you can open that Bible and read to them even if you don’t have all the answers to the questions they have. Start with something. Don’t wait to know it all or do it perfectly. Do it all in the name of the Lord, because “Anything worth doing, is worth doing poorly!”