We Commit to the Bit (and Other Things Only My Family Could Say)

“Family first.”

Everybody loves and claims the phrase. They have the coffee mug, the Hobby Lobby sign over the entryway, the adorable Christmas card photo declaring their ownership of that very value.

I have it too — it’s literally at the top of my core values list.

But when I got intentional about creating that list, as one of the first steps of many on my Midlife Transformation journey, here’s what I discovered:

So let me show you mine.

Not the dictionary version of ‘Family First.’ The real one.

For me, home isn’t four walls. It’s four people.

In our house, we sing our prayers.

We text each other almost entirely in GIFs.

And we always commit to the bit — if it’s an inside joke, a whimsical outing, or a game being played, you go all in, you never break character, you honor the bit.

We make memories on purpose: traditions, game nights, as much of the world as we can get to, life experienced together. (We were a homeschool family, so we learned by living it — and honestly the best lessons happened in the long, winding dinner-table conversations that had nothing to do with checking off a worksheet.)

We’re a team.

We love each other for who we are, not what we do.

We have each other’s backs, we say it out loud, and — yes — we absolutely disagree, sometimes loudly. But we do it knowing we’re safe. We forgive. We start over.

You are always, always welcome home.

And then there are the things I built into my girls when they were teeny tiny.

The things that are, without a doubt, purely US.

The first, with tickles, until everyone’s face hurt from laughing: We’re smart. We’re strong. We love. And we’re funny.

Our nightly dinner prayer, praising God for being great and thanking Him for the food because He’s out-of-sight…sung in harmony and complete with a clap at the end, followed by “Dig in.”

And the bedtime rituals.

The hug we share before they turn for their rooms (even still whenever they’re home): “Good night, I love you, sweet dreams, see you in the morning.” Also often accompanied by a sing-song tone and a loud, smacking kiss on the cheek.

And the second one, whispered every single night before we tucked them in: God made us. He makes no mistakes. And He loves us, just the way we are.

My oldest is now twenty-one. Not long ago, she told me she still says that last one to herself every night. Every night. God made me. He makes no mistakes. He loves me just the way I am.

Twenty-one years old — and that little blessing is still tucking her in.

Friend, I promise you: no one else on this earth has that.

No other family sings those exact prayers, commits to those particular bits, whispers those words into the dark.

Here’s the part that was sneaky, though.

That whole spine — loved for who we are, not what we do?

I gave it to my husband and to my girls for years before I ever once offered it to myself.

I was the one in the family still quietly earning her keep — with myself. No one else was asking that or expecting it of me. Just me.

Somewhere along the way, “family first” had curdled into “me last.”

And that’s Good Girl Ghosting in lipstick and pearls: disappearing inside the very love you’re busy pouring out.

The truest thing my own value had to teach me was this: I’m one of those four people, too

.

The grace I hand my family — loved for who we are, not what we produce — was always meant to include me.

This week on the podcast I said it: two people can share a value, but only you carry your version of it.

The word “family” means almost nothing on its own.

The GIFs and the bit and the nightly blessing — that’s everything.

That’s the part that’s actually yours.

So don’t borrow the Pinterest definition of your values.

Borrowed values can’t bring you home.

Write the one only your life could write — fingerprints and inside jokes and all.

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