Like Dew Your Youth

April 3, 2006 at 8:09 pm (parenting)

“The task of the parent, in other words, is not to confront directly the problems of the young and find the best solutions to them; it is to confront life, and Christ in life, and deal with that. A parent’s main job is not to be a parent, but to be a person. There are no techniques to master that will make a good parent. There is no book to read that will give the right answers. The parents’ main task is to be vulnerable in a living demonstration that adulthood is full, alive, and Christian. The adolescent meanwhile presents a daily agenda for what it means to become an adult and demonstrates the dynamics and difficulties inherent in the process. The agenda provides parents with exposes of their own infantilism, their reluctances to be responsible, their arbitrary preferences for childhood over adulthood, their selective demands for the prerogatives of adulthood without the prerequisites. The agenda becomes a map: before them, daily, parents have biological and emotional patterns lived out that show the way into the faith-growth to which Paul urges us after tha pattern that Christ lives for and in in us.”


I have just rediscovered Like Dew Your Youth by Eugene Peterson. I would love to discuss this book! Anyone want to join me?

Immersed in the Mystery,
Cynthia

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Parent Training

April 3, 2006 at 7:37 pm (parenting)

Just a general parenting rant, of sorts. Actually, rant is too strong of a word. Maybe it is just an observation, about myself probably. Generally, that what is comes down to . . . I recognize something in someone else and really God is using the situation to speak to me, to reveal a heart issue in me.

Yesterday someone came and asked for me to pray that her four year old son would start going to his class. This wasn’t a random request. Though I don’t know her very well, I am growing in my love of her and we are on the prayer team together.

To be honest, she caught me off guard as I was trying to process some other information and I am afraid that my response to her was a little short. I tried to explain myself but am not sure that I did explain very well. I asked her if she were willing to accept the Lord’s answer may be no, he isn’t ready to be attending class yet. I tried to explain to her that he may just need a bit more time to mature, there may be some fear issues to pray through, that all of my children were not comfortable going into class at that age. She walked away and wondered if I had offended her.

I don’t think she took offense, she seems to be the sweetest woman. However, I walked away feeling aggravated. Frustrated with the attitude that we want to get rid of our children so we can do other thing, spiritual things. When will we learn that the children are the spiritual thing that we need to be doing! The children are God’s method of exacting change in US!

Pause.

Do I hear myself? Do I hear the words I am speaking? Am I looking at myself? Oh God! Forgive me. Forgive me for feeling frustrated throughout the stages of childhood, wishing that they would just grow up, become mature, looking forward to the day that I don’t have to deal with child training issues anymore. It isn’t about child training issues, is it God? It’s about parent training issues, at least the training of this parent.

Father, do you wish that I would grow up, that I would mature . . . I believe you do because You have my best interest at heart, you know the benefits of maturity. But you are ever patient throughout this process and you gently lead me through. God, help me to have that heart toward my children, especially the teenagers. Gently lead all of us through together Lord.

Immersed in the Mystery,
Cynthia

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