Examining my own worldview

We need to ask ourselves what we, personally, do believe. Answering the following questions will help with that:

What things do I truly believe are worth caring about?

Which things matter the most to me?

What do I believe is wrong with the world?

What could I do to repair what is wrong?

Is it true that what I believe can be seen in how I live?

Examples of ways in which my beliefs are revealed in actions that I
refrain from doing are these:

Examples of ways in which my beliefs are revealed in actions that I do
are these:

What decisions have we made in our family that nourish the
connectedness I want to have with my children?

What decisions or lack of decision are in danger of breaking that
connectedness?

What tendencies have been developing in my own life?

What tendencies do I see developing in my children?

Young adult: No event in my life has been more significant in shaping my current worldview than the sudden, unexpected death of my father and its lasting effects on my family. I had been in college for a day when my dad suddenly died. My mother, a secondary wage earner whose focus had been childrearing, suddenly became the breadwinner of the family. I saw how she had been ill-equipped educationally for that role. I also began to see that the system itself had handicapped her. My father’s high school education could get him a good union job in an aluminum plant. My mom’s high school education qualified her to be a para-educator in a school, a receptionist, or a retail clerk. None of these jobs could begin to compare in terms of earning power or benefits. Moreover, I saw how others assumed that she wasn’t quite as qualified or capable as my dad, simply because of her gender. The real world isn’t a friendly place for a single, high school-educated woman in middle age.

I saw all this at 18 years old and started to wonder why this was. I quickly realized that my mom wasn’t the only one, either. I began to see the injustice of it all – my mom had played by society’s rules, stayed at home, raised her kids, done everything those prophets of “family values” had told her to, and had gotten kicked in the teeth for it. I decided then that I wanted my work, and the way I lived my life, to be about empowering women. I wanted every woman to have access to education, to better jobs, and to the tools necessary to provide for their basic needs without living on the margins. And the more I learned, the more I became convinced that such a future would require widespread systemic change on a variety of levels. That event, and its after-affects, are the wellspring for my subsequent life journey to this point. What does my worldview have to do with raising my children in the fabric of faithfulness?

From: Families Living in the Fabric of Faithfulness, Gloria Goris Stronks and Julia K. Stronks