Do you have ambition...

I have never thought of myself as an overly ambitious person, I don't have big dreams of the perfect house that is located on the perfect street and myself giving diner parties to neighboring senators! Is that ambitious..I am sure it is someones ambition.

I mean I want things out of life. I have desires, but getting "ahead"? I just don't think I am that way. I don't "keep up with the Joneses", I don't feel the need to excel at many things in order to gain this or that. I want to do things right, I want to do things well, I want order but not to be better than someone else. I also do not have an ambitious husband. He is not working 17 hours a day to get "X" promotion. So I am unversed with how ambitious people feel.

My thoughts came from the movie, The Other Boleyn Sister, which by the way is pretty good, although I cant promise historical accuracy without much investigation. Anyway, the father of the Boleyn girls is basically willing to sell his soul to the devil ( along with the virtue of his daughters) on the basis of ambition. His wife at one point of the movie says to her husband, "Since when did ambition become a virtue instead of a sin." Out of the whole movie this point stuck with me. It is true that ambition is sinful? Right.

Daily we push our kids, be good at this, be good at that. We instill in them the desire to be ambitious as if it is a good thing. What I don't think we do is along with teaching them to excel at things is to point out why we should excel at "x". We should push and strive to become WHO God wants us to be, the career He wants, the job He wants, the plan He has for our lives.

I want my children to succeed, I want my children to excel, I want my children to have good things in life. But with all that said I want them to excel at what God has for them, I want them to succeed in pursuing God and in turn live the life He set before them. I want my children to have good things in life, but not to think that those "good" things only are good if they have monetary value, or power behind them, or come with a status symbol attached to them.

So ambition bad... but striving for excellence good. Agree...

Carrie in Texas