Heaven sent
Read time: 3 minutes
Welcome to issue #063 of Unicorn Parents. I share practical insights and reflections to help you build a profitable business without missing the magic at home. If you’re serious about winning at work while raising great kids, you’ve come to the right place. This is a community built for ambitious parents who want both.
Two months since my last issue. My boys are part of the reason why, which feels fitting for what I want to share today.
In the middle of a busy day, I occasionally stop and think about my boys.
I picture their faces, and my heart instantly melts. I smile.
Nothing about my working conditions has changed. The problems are still there. The deadlines remain. But somehow, in that small moment, I become a better person.
More grateful.
More patient.
More motivated.
And all it took was a thought.
So I sometimes wonder:
“Why don’t I make it a habit to think about them more often?”
Raising children is hard. Beautiful, but hard.
There are days when I desperately want a break from them. Yet when they are gone, I miss them. Distance softens the frustrations and brings their faces back into focus.
Their memory becomes energy.
During my formative years, my mother was our family’s breadwinner.
She woke up around 5 AM every morning, drove to her restaurant, turned on the grill, cooked all day, cleaned after closing, mopped the floors, washed the dishes, and did it all again the next morning.
Whenever anyone asked what kept her going, her answer was simple:
“My three boys.”
She called me her “Vitamin C.”
Her source of energy.
I can finally relate to what she meant, now that I have boys of my own.
My wife and I have spent the last two weeks away from our boys.
We’ve been hustling all over the UC Irvine campus, running GATI, our research and entrepreneurship programs for gifted and talented high school students.
For two weeks, other parents entrusted their children to us. And perhaps being responsible for so many young people made me think even more deeply about my own.
Children can give us extraordinary strength.
But there is also a danger.
We can place them on a pedestal.
We can make them the center of our identity.
We can pressure them to fulfill the dreams we never lived, earn the recognition we never received, or become proof that all our sacrifices were worthwhile.
That is not stewardship.
That is worship.
And children were never meant to carry the weight of being worshiped.
In my faith, the highest place belongs to God.
Our children are not our gods, our trophies, or extensions of our ambition.
They are gifts from heaven, entrusted to our care.
Perhaps they are a little like angels.
They point us toward something divine.
They awaken love, wonder, sacrifice, and joy.
But we do not worship angels.
And we should not worship our children.
We steward them.
We protect them, guide them, correct them, love them, and help them discover the life placed inside them.
While they are under our roof, our greatest lesson will not be what we tell them.
It will be the life we show them:
How we love our spouse.
How we treat people.
How we handle failure.
How we pursue meaningful work without allowing it to consume us.
Our children should inspire us.
But they should never be forced to complete us.
They are NOT here to live out our dreams.
They are here to discover their own calling.
And then, one day, our final act of stewardship will be to let them go.
Perhaps that is why they bring us such inexplicable, heart-melting joy.
Some of heaven’s greatest gifts are not given to be possessed.
They are given to be loved, stewarded, and released.
I love that your mom called you her Vitamin C! That's a wonderful way to describe kids, and I see mine in the same way.