Listen. And hear me good. You can let these backstabbers mess up your happy home if you want to. And I don’t care if you believe you currently have an unhappy home. I’m willing to bet they are the cause of it.

You give them your all. You put their needs before your own and what do they do? They take it for granted. They hurt you. Turn their back on you. Don’t believe me? Just wait a little while longer and mark my word.

Backstabbers!

Many don’t believe this or they utter it but don’t act upon it; but the proper order of our homes (and life for that matter) is God first, then you and your spouse, then the kids, then family and whomever else. It is definitely NOT our kids then everyone else fall in neatly behind.

But what do we do? We put those backstabbers before everyone to include our spouses. And this often leads to the numerous problems we experience within our marriages. Making this a habit is a sure destination to either a divorce or a house you dread to be in.

Imagine this…

From the moment they are born, they have your undivided attention. Well of course, they need you to survive. And we love on these babies like our life depends on it. For me, as mommy, this meant a lot of what I call “mommy’s guilt.”

I had guilt when I returned to work. Took awhile to get used to being away from them so many hours out of a day. I’m mommy!!! Shouldn’t I be with them at all times? But it didn’t end there. Anytime away from them I experienced this guilt.

If I wanted to go to the gym after work, oh no; that meant more time away from them. A church meeting after work. Eek they must go with me! A girls day out? I can’t. The baby needs me. So, what can you imagine happened to dating my husband? Ummm it didn’t. A date consisted of the whole family.

I imagine this is your life too. We stopped dating or loving on our spouses. Weight creeped on because making time to go to the gym was too much of a sacrifice. Being a fashionista, wait what is that? Outside of the basic black and browns for work clothes being rotated every week; yoga pants are the fashion for the weekends. We let ourselves go…because of them. They came along and they are more important…more important than us.

But we all know or have heard the stories. These babies grow up. They become pre-teens that are disgusted with our presence. They become driving teens that are far too busy for us. Are they dating yet? If so, who are you again? They go off to college and you are now just the ATM machine, not Mom and Dad.

Backstabbers!

So now imagine this…now that the kids have left your nest. What is this, like age 18? And a good 3 of those years they were consumed with their friends, dating, extracurricular activities; maybe you saw them 1 hour out of the day. Maybe that long. You barely know who they’ve become. 3 years before that they spent rolling their eyes.

So wait, maybe you had 12 good years with this kid!!! But your life is centered around them. You are now celebrating your 20th wedding anniversary with this person you have a good 20-30 more years with. What do you know about them? Are you two dating? What do you have in common? Are you still BFFs?

For many of us, the answer to those questions is a reverberating ‘NO.’ Sigh. On a map, you are here. Maybe a little happy with your life. Over half of your life gone, but what have you accomplished? Did your dreams die at their births like so many of us? Has sickness taken over your body from bad eating habits and little to no physical activity? How strong is your marriage? Or are you two strangers?

All because of those backstabbers!

Am I saying we should all of a sudden abandon parenthood??? Absolutely not! Be the best parent you can be! But we must learn how to be the best spouse as well. And take care of ourselves. YES! ALL of this at the same time! Learning to strike that perfect balance is key.

Will there be times where you are 75% focused on yourself while the other areas are splitting that quarter? Yeah there will be times like those. Don’t beat yourself up over them either. In the same token, there should be times that you and your spouse hold the title. Don’t miss that because the worse case is that you end up on the other side of life with kids living their best lives while you and your spouse are living in a home together yet alone.

All because we gave 90% at all times to those backstabbers!

Thanks for your attention. Remember you are your own competition.

Competitionof1