Category Archives: Adult Children

Pick Your Poison

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In the news recently a mother from Alaska was put on trial for using hot sauce to discipline her son. She was found guilty of child abuse because she video taped the episode to get on a TV show entitled “Mommy Confessions.”

I haven’t watched the video and don’t have an opinion about her tactics but must confess that years ago I initiated several hot sauce episodes at our house, too. I was making a point about unacceptable language, trying to fit the punishment to the crime as Dr. Dobson had taught us. I did let the offender run to the bathroom immediately to spit and swish, but a drop of hot sauce was always effective toward improved speech and usually didn’t need to be repeated.

Last night we ordered Chinese food for dinner, expecting to serve 10 or so, and in the bottom of our boxful of food was an abundance of sauce packets: sweet, soy and hot. Holding up one of the yellow packets, I said to Nelson, “Do you recognize this hot sauce from your childhood?”

“Yeah,” he said, laughing. “But I love it now.”

His comment got us talking. Was the “yucky” childhood taste of hot sauce a precursor to developing a fondness for it later?

As we ended the conversation he said, “I wonder if you drank enough poison as a kid, you’d eventually get a taste for it.”

I thought of the first time someone tastes alcohol, a poison of sorts. It’s often bitter and unpleasant. But a young person who considers beer drinking to be sophisticated will keep trying, gradually gaining a liking for it. It may lead them into alcoholism, and in a sense Nelson’s question about getting a taste for poison has its answer.

The same principle, though, can work the other way, too. Developing a taste for something positive can start with forced bits that seem negative. Take, for example, prayer or reading the Bible. For new Christians, neither is easy. We wonder whether or not our prayers are getting through, and Scripture seems confusing. But we want to obey God, so we grit our teeth and keep trying.

One day we see a prayer answered or realize a biblical passage has touched our need, and we want more. We’re developing a taste for something that was distasteful in the beginning. Eventually prayer and Scripture can become addictions of the highest sort.

Of course it’s important to put the right things in front of our children, but the same is true for us. It’s probably a good idea to be cautious about new experiences, knowing small tastes can grow into demanding addictions.

I’m not sure what will happen to the newsworthy hot-sauce-mom, but since I’ve made a true confession in this post, the authorities may come after me, too.

“Ships, though they are so great and are driven by strong winds, are still directed by a very small rudder.” (James 3:4)

Family Similarities

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I love looking at baby pictures of friends’ grandchildren, studying pudgy faces in search of resemblances to parents and grandparents. God often weaves physical characteristics through the generations in a way that’s familial but new.

Grandparents have the delightful perspective of being one-generation-removed from the new babies that arrive. We’re involved with our grands, to be sure, but are no longer on parenting’s center stage.  Watching from the wings, we can observe similarities and differences, strengths and weaknesses that parents are often too busy to see.

As a young mom, my focus was getting the job done, whatever the moment demanded. Pausing to contemplate the inner-child required a slow-down I couldn’t afford. Now, as a grandma, I have the luxury of watching and listening. The more I study children, whether my family’s or others’, the more I appreciate God’s handiwork, particularly his unending design creativity.

Despite similarities through the generations, he never runs out of ways to make each individual unique. After creating trillions of people, he’s still enjoying his work-in-wombs, knitting together DNA strands of infinite variety.

Our family is looking forward to February, 2012, when we’ll get a look at what God has been up to for 9 months within my daughter Linnea. Who is he sending to join our ranks? What family characteristics will come through, and what fresh ideas will God have woven into this new person?

Craving answers to these questions is what’s partially responsible for Nate and I having 7 children. We couldn’t wait to see who else he might put together and send our way. I wish there’d have been more baby-bearing years so we could have had more children, because as our 7 have grown into honorable adults, I continue to be impressed with evidence of God’s creative flare in each of them.

I believe when we delight in the children God sends us, whether by birth, adoption, guardianship or friendship, we’re bringing pleasure to the One who made them. We can study children the same way the Creator stood back and studied the first human ever made. Just like him we can say, “You’re very good!”

This week God handed me a remarkable new thought. Nate has met and gotten to know our miscarried child.

It was a goose-bump moment for me and probably for Nate, too, when they first connected. Heaven is all about relationships, both backwards (past-borns) and forward (future-borns). On earth we’re limited to knowing only 3 or maybe 4 generations, but heavenly camaraderie will have no such limits.

We’ll get to see God-initiated traits and features threading their way through every generation, all the way back to Adam and Eve. And because he made us all in his image, maybe we’ll even be able to see attributes that began as far back as the Father, Son and Spirit! Awesome thought…

“Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous.” (Psalm 139:14)

Fast Friends for the Long Haul

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Like many women, I have a number of friends from long ago, relationships that are tried and true. Our one-on-one’s have stood the test of time and will last, we are sure, until death do us part.

I’ve spent the last couple of days with one of these gems, my friend Lynn. We first met as pre-teens at Moody Church during the Eisenhower years. By 1959 we were bonded in a way that has lasted through 52 years.

Lynn and I acted goofy in the early days. For example, we tried smoking when we found a package of Cools under a park bush. After running home for matches, we went back to the park, hid behind a hedge and lit up, swallowing the smoke as if it was a cool drink. It didn’t have much appeal.

We blistered our skin under a sun lamp, trying to get a winter tan. We drenched our hair with peroxide in an effort to go blond. We pulled bad-mannered pranks at the church camp.

But we did good things together, too. We learned to knit and turned out sweaters, hats, mittens and scarves. We supported each other through multiple boyfriends and ended up engaged within a year of each other. We married 9 months apart and were bridesmaids in each other’s weddings. Our husbands became good friends and were in the Army at the same time, though Don rose much higher in the ranks. We became grandmas the same year, and this week we enjoyed being together again… as always.

Life has become more tenuous these days. While Nate was struggling with cancer, Don was battling the aftereffects of a stroke. Rough knocks have gradually changed us, and we talked about how different our perspectives are these days compared to “before”, touching on each decade of our friendship.

We’ve accepted the difficult truth that God sends upsetting experiences our way for our ultimate good. His timing is significant, and he delivers crises based on what we can handle and no more. He has us on his mind continually and stays close through every decade. He’s loves us when we act goofy and forgives when we offend him.

In other words, he’s the perfect Friend.

Lynn and I thoughtlessly set God aside as teens. But this Friend, ever-patient, preserved us through those rocky years and waited for us to turn full-face toward him. Difficulties were part of the reason we did.

Today we howled with laughter in a read-aloud session of our high school letters, but the very best part of these two days has been our conversations about the Lord, his Word and his work in our lives.

When our years conclude as Nate’s have, one-on-one friendship with God will be all that counts.

“Since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son.” (Romans 5:10)