Where are you mom? Where are you dad?

We've all heard the saying, "the path to hell is paved with good intentions"

Do we really know what that means and better yet, do we care? When you ask someone today what is the most important thing in your life you will often hear things like; my family, my wife, my children.

For those very "noble" people who say that their family or some part thereof I applaud you and slap you across the face at the same time. Most of you who consider your family as the most important spend the least amount of time with them because you have a "demanding" job, or a "demanding" hobby. You have very REAL intentions of placing your family first but your priorities are so skewed that you can not even see that your family has become the least important thing in your life.

Now I know the counter argument already - 'Well I have to work really hard to "support" my family.'

Great! work very hard is what I will tell you, but NEVER sacrifice what is important for what is not. If your family is really important to you then you will demonstrate this with real acts of love. I'm sure you've heard the saying "actions speak louder than words".

You may not appreciate or understand now, but 3 hours of overtime could never make us for your daughter's first ballet recital that you missed because you were trying to make that extra money to buy the ballet shoes that she needs. You will not believe it now, but your daughter will love you as a father more if she has wear older shoes just so that she can see you in the crowd when she comes on the stage.

Yes we make a lot of sacrifices in our lives but sometimes we often to choose to make the "wrong" sacrifices, if there is such a thing.

Now I started off by saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I'm sure we can all see how this applies to the person who makes a million promises in his life to do good, to be a better person, but never does any of it. We will call that person a hypocrite and rightly so he is.

Have you ever thought that you do the same thing when you choose work over your family; when you choose the football game over family dinner; when you choose a night out with the boys over a night out with your wife; when you choose to sleep in late while your children go to Church by themselves?

Your position in life - mother, father, wife or husband - came with certain "expectations" and promises that you made by just accepting to be a husband or wife, mother or father.

To put anything except God above being a husband/wife, mother or father is to be just as much a hypocrite as someone who promises with the best of intentions but does nothing.

Yes the phrase is a strong one, but it is only stated to help us all really examine our hypocritical behavior and to fix them for the better.