Category Archives: Parenting

Making a Good Impression

Posted on by

Bookstore shelves are loaded with parenting titles, but the one I like best is a 1979 book by Anne Ortlund: CHILDREN ARE WET CEMENT. It’s a powerful statement with accurate parenting implications.

When workers poured the concrete for our patio 28 years ago, our five children each pressed their palms into the wet cement, along with a quarter from their birth years. I pressed in a penny dated that year, 1986, next to the line-up of hands, to mark the date those childhood palms were set. As soft as the concrete was when we touched it, shortly thereafter it became rock-hard and has been that way ever since. Without the use of a jack-hammer, the hand impressions are permanent.

As children arrive into our families, they’re soft and impressionable, “wet” with potential. Parenting them is the most important assignment we’ll ever get, a serious responsibility given to us by the Person who created every baby and has specific plans for each life. The way we live in front of them leaves a permanent mark.

While spending time with my grandchildren this week, I’ve seen again how supple the mind of a child really is. Children spend the lion’s share of their waking hours imitating the rest of us. If we open a kitchen drawer, as soon as we close it, a watching child opens it again, following our example.

Little ones don’t need a reason to imitate us. They do it instinctively. We own the power to be examples for good or evil, an enormous responsibility that should cause us to keep our lives clean as we go along.

Modeling well in front of one and two year olds is easy. In front of teenagers it’s more difficult. 

But we do our best, because we want to give our children the strongest possible springboard into adulthood. Despite multiple failures and a list of if-only’s, we keep trying. Knowing we’re being carefully watched is a strong motivator!

As a child of God, I wonder if I’m carefully watching Jesus in the same way. Do I study his life and try to emulate him? Or do I dismiss that possibility, knowing I could never match him? Jesus instructed us to watch what he did, then copy it. Do I?

Of course I’m going to fall short, just as children fail to duplicate adult behavior. But that doesn’t keep them from trying, and the same should be true for me. Although I’ll never be able to exude the fruit of the Spirit as flawlessly as Jesus did, with practice I can improve.

Watching my grandchildren try, fail, and keep trying encourages me to do the same.

“Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.” (John 13:14-15)

Q & A

Posted on by

Flying from Chicago to Orlando is, as we used to say in the ‘60’s, a trip, and I don’t mean just the traveling kind. Airplanes are loaded with families headed for Disney World, and kids are riding high with excitement.

 I’m on the way to my grandson’s first birthday, which will take place tomorrow, but partying began early during today’s take-off. As our festive blue and red 737 lifted from the runway, it seemed to angle straight up, slamming us into our seats and eliciting applause and cheers from the children on board. They were pumped for a fun ride, and what they got was competition for Space Mountain.

It was a relief to get into the air after a couple of hours in the airport. Children don’t wait well, and parents all around me were working overtime to keep peace. Our plane arrived a bit late, which brought tension to the waiting area. Traveling is high-pressure for almost everyone, but adding diaper bags, pint-sized back packs and tired little ones turns up the heat considerably.

One little boy, about eight, was a non-stop question-machine, every sentence looking for an answer from his multi-tasking mother. The one I loved best was, “Did people used to not be able to go everyplace?”

It was a good question for a child on a trip. His mom’s response wasn’t as good. “Did you wash your hands when you were in the bathroom?”

Without answering, he repeated his question. “Mom, did people used to not be able to go everyplace?”

This time she answered with, “Is your zipper up?” He asked a third time, and she said, “Tie your shoe. You’re going to fall.”

But children are pros at outlasting parents, and because of his tireless repetitions, she finally answered him. “No.” The whole exchange was like a Jerry Seinfeld comedy bit.

Traveling is a nerve-wracking business full of questions without good answers. A relationship with God can be that way, too. He might ask me, “Did you do the right thing in that relationship yesterday?”

And I answer with, “Please bless my children.”

He repeats his question, and I say, “Help my husband at work.”

But God is every bit as persistent as an eight year old question-machine. And because he wants me to move steadily closer to righteousness, he’ll outlast me every time. My thoughts may be as scattered as the young boy’s mother when she was unable to focus on his question. But God will work on me until he breaks through my multi-tasking fog and gets my answer to what he asks.

There’s one acceptable way for me to dodge God’s questions, and that would be to ask a question back. But to be fair, my question would have to be related to his. If he asks, “Did you seek godly counsel before you made that decision?” I could then ask-back, “Would you tell me who I should talk to about it?”

There are no questions more important than God’s, and he is intensely interested in my answers, not because he didn’t already know what I was going to say, but because he wanted me to hear myself indicating where I stood.

That harried airport mother should have answered her son with a question of her own:

“What?”

After that, they might have made real progress.

“But what about you?” Jesus asked. “Who do you say I am?” Peter answered, “God’s Messiah.” Luke 9:20)

Fire-builder

Posted on by

Nelson has always loved fire. I remember catching him lighting matches in his upstairs bedroom when he was about eight. “What on earth are you doing?” I said, alarmed at the prospect of a fire in our very old, all-wooden house.

“I’m testing stuff,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Seeing what burns and what doesn’t.”

He proceeded to tell me he’d cut a tuft of his hair, which burned “real good” in a bowl and had tried to melt a plastic truck, which was “no good.” When I saw a black smudge on the closet door, I asked if he’d tried to burn that, too.

“Yup,” he said, without emotion. “I couldn’t get it to go.”

My heart was pounding, but I tried to stay calm, suggesting his experiments might be better performed outdoors. Over the years he did a great deal of that, learning valuable lessons: fire crackers can explode before you’re ready, and all burns hurt.

Now, in his thirties, Nelson is a master fire-builder, and our old stone fireplace has had inviting fires in it every evening. He loves everything about fire-building, starting with finding dead wood in the forest and hauling it home. Sawing it into log-lengths then hand-splitting it with an ax is rewarding for him, and when the fire is aglow, it’s satisfying for the rest of us, too.

Tonight the fireplace is dark, because Nelson is five time zones away at the University of the Nations in Kona, Hawaii. He’s on his way to New Zealand where he’ll start with another group of YWAM students for 12 weeks of spiritual training followed by a three-month mission outreach.

Although Nelson made sure I had a big pile of ready-to-burn wood before he left, I haven’t made a fire. I don’t get the same kick he does out of arranging, lighting and coaxing a fire into full flame, but the real reason is that he’s not here to sit in front of it with me.

On a cold winter evening, a wood-burning fire invites people to gather for conversation. Sometimes a fire’s attraction is so strong, chairs get pulled into a semi-circle around the hearth, close enough to see firelight dancing on each face.

This winter we’ve shared many meals and scores of meaningful talks in front of Nelson’s fires, beginning last September. When the house was full of family, we’d look forward to baby bedtimes, then congregate in front of the fire with ice cream or brownies, enjoying loving camaraderie at the end of busy days.

But all 14 of them are gone now, and my quiet cottage has only me in it, which is OK. Tonight I’m especially missing Nelson, who was the last to leave, just yesterday. When I got home from the airport and found his touching thank you note on the kitchen counter, I bawled like a baby.

But he’s doing exactly what God called him to do, which brings me deep satisfaction. As a matter of fact, each of my kids and kids-in-law are right where the Lord wants them. Their determination to follow his direction “lights my fire.”

And I don’t even have to go to a cold woodpile to feel its glow.

“Love is as strong as death…  Love flashes like fire, the brightest kind of flame.” (Song of Solomon 8:6)