How does a family team WIN?

Note: Yesterday, I started typin' up what our family talked about when we introduced the concept of how our family is like a team... Of course, I don't like to make you stay and read my blog post all day long, so to keep it short, I just broke it up into segments. Here it continues:

Generally speaking, teams have a GROUP goal: WINNING! What does this mean as a family? After all, it's not like we're really competing against other families, right? We're simply striving to be STRONG, so it's like we want victory based on how well we fight against behaviors that would weaken our family ties...

During our Family Discussion about our Family Team, we decided WINNING means to LOVE GOD and LOVE ONE ANOTHER, no matter what, and to make sure each family member feels that love based on how we interact with each other. (Sound familiar?)

We acknowledged that this plan for victory requires a LOT of PRACTICE -- like, DAILY -- kind of like sports teams! So, this indicates that we need to spend time with our family on a daily basis -- not just living in the same house watching the same TV, but actually interacting!

Conversing!
Playing!
... and praying and laughing and crying and hugging and high-fiving and working and hobby-ing together...

Mealtime!
Attending church together!
Supporting one another in various endeavors!

Maybe even having Family Home Evening, which Mormons may have started, but it's not like they charge a fee for people of other faiths wanting to do it!

We also determined that some areas of behavior are like games of varying importance. Yeah, yeah, we want to win them all, but sometimes even the best coaches choose to let a team play less-than-their best so they can use their energy more wisely in higher-stakes games.

Can we stand to "lose" a little in "games" (or scrimmages) like tidiness?

Yes... but when it comes to things like loyalty, selflessness, and forgiveness -- these are like the Play-offs! The World Series! The Super Bowl! -- so we need to be playing with all our energy, effort, and fortitude.

(Wow! Fortitude! That word just flowed out of my fingers while I was typing!!! What is fortitude? Well, it sounds like an awesome 'tude! I often ask my kids to change their 'tudes, and from now on, I'm going to encourage them to change it to Fortitude!!!)

Individual members of the team have their own goals, based on what position they play. So the quarterback is not going to have the same goals as the cheerleaders! These ideas will be discussed, or at least the beginnings of the possible, awesomely-interesting discussion, in tomorrow's post!!!