Follow The Leader
As the first born in my family, leadership comes naturally to me. And now that the older generation is passing on, I feel this strong sense of obligation to keep our family traditions going. No matter what must be done, they all wait on me to take charge. And sometimes it gets exhausting and overrated. Being a leader does not stop there, I find myself in leadership roles for work, hanging with friends and church. Now being a single mother, I get the joy of being the leader of our little family, making all the decisions, keeping the house in order, doing all the driving and even creating moments of fun.
But there are times I crave to just be a follower and have someone else take on the responsibilities. Because this sister is getting burnt out and running out of gas to lead.
So last week I prayed asking God to show me how to let go of the responsibilities and delegate them. And he showed me my son first. So that weekend I asked my son to take the lead in deciding what we could do for the weekend. Oh, how I was so nervous and apprehensive about what he was going to decide for us to do. Especially the fact that he was 8 years old, and he has been asking for a YES Day. I wanted to give him rules and limits on what we should and should not do, but that was me going back to being a leader. So, I just let him take the lead.
To my surprise my son said “Mom I just want to go bowling, play Putt Putt golf, eat some pizza and then go to the park play with the kids while you walk the dog. I was like that’s all Mais, and he said Yes. I thought to myself, Whew I thought it was going to be something worse than the movie. But it wasn’t and I felt relieved. I think I am going to like delegating weekend activities to him. It all worked out. A month ago, I had signed him up for Kids bowl free. For me, I had not bowled in a while, something I really enjoy doing.
That weekend turned out to be one of the best weekends we had in a long time. I was able to relax and enjoy being a follower for the first time in a long time while having fun.
I praised Maison for creating that moment of fun, and explained to him how he was a great leader for the weekend. He was so happy and proud of himself. With peace in my heart, I told him that he could sometimes be given that role more often for the weekends. And he said, “You are the best mom ever”.
I truly thank God for the courage it took to delegate that responsibility to my son and how he really did a great job in being a leader for our family. We had so much fun that we started taking bowling lessons together. Our first lesson was Sunday! Let the good times ROLL.
