I once had lunch with a seminary professor of mine. He shared a story about a conversation with his mailman where he listened carefully, asked questions, and thoughtfully sought to encourage him. He then explained that as he walked away from that conversation feeling good, he sensed the Lord ask: why don’t you treat your wife with the same kindness?

Struck to the heart, he decided that day to live by one rule: my first sheep will get my best, not my leftovers.

I’ve thought about that a lot since our lunch. It speaks to a weird and sad drift I have found in myself and others: to give strangers the best of our words, attitudes, attention, and energies and give our family the leftovers.

For many of us, the greatest danger isn’t rejecting our family, but reordering their place in our lives, treating them with less attention and care than we happily give to others.

Why Do Strangers Get Our Best?

Though few would make this decision consciously, I think there are a few reasons it becomes so easy and so common.

1. The Stakes Feel Higher With Strangers

Strangers judge you by the few samples they see. One hiccup paints their entire perception of you, whereas one good impression earns their admiration and esteem. We want to perform well. Your family’s view of you, on the other hand, is based on 10,000 samples. The damage of one bad day doesn’t do much to their view of you. One good day doesn’t result in the same applause. Your family won’t judge you by one bad slipup, nor will they reward you for a single performance, so it’s easy to stop performing altogether and focus on those who will.

2. Being Nice to Strangers Is Easy

Kindness to the barista takes 30 seconds of attention and a few thoughtful words that go beyond the rudeness they’re accustomed to. The interaction has a clear start and a quick end. Being gracious to your spouse or child requires patience, faithfulness, and longsuffering that have no end. Stranger kindness is a sprint, but family kindness is a marathon. Almost anyone can sprint, but marathons require more.

3. Strangers Have a Clean Record

The more superficial the relationship, the cleaner their record in your eyes. An acquaintance’s annoying habit or weird remark is a single offense. The exact same habit from your spouse or child done for the 800th time hits different. With those closest to us, it is easier to react to the mountain of past offenses, not the moment of the present one. We give strangers a clean slate, but our family gets a detailed ledger. Paul said that love “keeps no record of wrongs” (1 Cor. 13:5) because it won’t survive if it does.

4. We Presume Upon Security

Family love is secure. Stranger love is fragile. So we work hard to earn strangers’ fickle approval and work less hard for the families we presume “have to love us anyway.” Where our vows and family obligations should compel our best, we use them as license to justify our worst.

5. Time and Energy

On any given day, most of our time and attention is given to the outside world or the mundane labors of the day. Dad and mom are fulfilling their 9 to 5 responsibilities. Kids are focusing on periods 1 through 8. We’re out and about, spending time and expending loads of energy. Then, when everyone returns home, they’re depleted and inclined to clock out. It isn’t so much a decision as it is the reality of a full day. With this pattern, it is easy to give strangers our best unless we make the conscious decision that the moment we return home, our family will get it.

6. Empty Admiration Is Easier Than Real Accountability

Strangers will accept the version of ourselves we like to project. They don’t have anything else to work from. Our families know the version of ourselves we actually are, including the things we wish weren’t true. Strangers can make us feel the joy of being seen as we want to be. Families can make us feel the conviction of being who we actually are. It’s easy to look at the photoshopped picture of ourselves, harder to look in the mirror. It will always be easier to chase cheap admiration of strangers rather than the genuine accountability of family.

Given how easy it is to overlook our first sheep, we have to check in with ourselves.

Be Honest With Yourself

Are you kinder to strangers than to your spouse & kids?

It is worth saying that home should be where the mask comes off. A family should not be an audience to perform for. Our spouses and children should be the people who get to see us tired, discouraged, and unimpressive. Belonging to a family like this is a gift.

But we must not confuse being unguarded at home with being unrestrained at home. Being unguarded means you’re comfortable and willing to allow your family to see your weaknesses. Being unrestrained means you make your family absorb your weaknesses. Being unguarded at home means you don’t perform for their applause, but you do work for their good. Being unrestrained at home means you don’t work for their good because they don’t applaud. Being unguarded is intimacy. Being unrestrained is selfishness.

Ordinary moments reveal the difference.

• Unguarded is walking in the door and saying, “I had a brutal day. I’m running on empty.” Unrestrained is saying nothing about your day and snapping at your kid for leaving their shoes in the hallway.
• Unguarded is letting your wife see you discouraged. Unrestrained is making her the target of your discouragement.
• Unguarded opens the door and invites your family in. Unrestrained opens the door and lets everything out on them.
• Unguarded says, “Help me carry this.” Unrestrained says, “You carry this.”
• Unguarded love builds trust. Unrestrained habits slowly teach the people we love most that being close to us is the most dangerous place to be.

We should feel comfortable at home. It should not be a place where we feel pressure to perform. But neither should it be a place where we feel free not to love. At home, get rid of your mask, but not your duty. Being at home should not lower the standard of love, but heighten it.

Don’t Give Your First Sheep Your Leftovers

Love has an order. We are called to do good to everyone and “especially to those who are of the household of faith” (Gal. 6:10). We must love our neighbors, but our family comes first (1 Tim. 5:8). In short, love begins with the people God has placed closest to us.

What does that look like?

Take the guest test. Analyze your words, actions, or attitudes and ask, “Is this how I would treat a guest?” With a guest, you’d likely be polite, courteous, patient, grateful, attentive, and thoughtful about their needs. Ask yourself, “Does my family get this same treatment?”

Pause at the threshold. Before you walk in the door, take a minute in the car and decide afresh that your family gets the best of what remains in you. Pray for God’s help to do it.

Give your family your first and best. When you walk in the door, give your spouse and children the firstfruits of your attention, kindness, and energy, not your own rest, phone, or favorite distractions.

When you fail, own your junk and repent quickly. Few things show the power and goodness of the gospel better than a parent or spouse who says, “I was wrong. Will you forgive me?”

How we treat those outside our home should be a more formal version of how we treat those inside the home, not a replacement. Strangers should get the form of love; family should get its substance. By all means, give strangers your manners, but give your family your heart.

Remember Jesus and Be Like Him

Jesus knew His sheep (John 10:14) and loved them “to the end” (John 13:1). He taught them, provided for them, persevered with them, washed their feet, and died for their sins. His own got His first and His best. Christ never gives His bride or His family His leftovers. We love because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). Christ’s love for us is both the pattern for loving our families and the power to do it.

Maybe the Lord’s question to my professor is for us too: why don’t you treat your family with the same kindness?

Your first sheep deserve your best, not your leftovers.