My Letter to My Kids Part 1

This series of posts comes from a sermon I recently gave in my church. It's a little lengthy, so I'll split it up. :)

As a parent, I happen to think my kids are pretty great. I could talk about them for days and tell all kinds of stories that I think are wonderful, cute and funny. I am fully aware that those stories are never as wonderful, cute and funny to other people as they are to me. Maybe some of them aren’t wonderful, cute or funny to other people. But still, as a parent, I love to talk about my kids. They occupy a lot of my thought. Beyond that I’ve always been a kid person. For most of my life I’ve thought about things through the lens of how they affect kids. A big part of the call God has placed on my life is to serve children. So, as I talk about my kids and my experience as a parent. I want to make it clear that I’m not just talking to parents of young children. Each of us has kids in our lives. If we don’t have young kids we are responsible for, we have grandkids, nieces, nephews, neighbors, and friends, including, but not limited to the kids that are a part of our church family. So as I talk about my experience with my kids, I would ask all of you to think about the kids in your life, no matter what your relationship to them is.

In my boys’ baby books there are pages for a letter from Mommy and Daddy. I’m a bit of a perfectionist. I hate to leave blanks. But I still haven’t written a single word on that page in either of my boys' baby books.

          That page is such a challenge for me. How do I sum up all that I want for my children and all that I want to tell them into the few sentences that will fit onto an 8 ½ x 11 sheet of paper? What are the most important things I can tell them? What do I want most for my kids?

          It’s not a difficult question to answer. Each of us wants the kids in our lives, whether they be our kids, grandkids, nieces, nephews, or friends to be happy. As much as possible we want to protect them from heartache and pain. Most of us have some dreams that go along with our concern for their happiness. Before they are born we have our own plans for them. We expect our kids to be great. We dream of star students, great athletes and talented musicians. We want our kids to grow up to become well-adjusted adults with high-paying, prestigious professions. Of course, when the time is right, they will fall in love with the perfect person and give us the perfect grandkids and we will all live happily-ever-after. Sure, we know when we start our dreaming that there will be some bumps along the way. But we want their paths through life to be as easy and guarded as possible.

          I could fill my boys’ pages with my aspirations for their lives and advice on how to fulfill them. After all, there’s nothing altogether wrong with my (admittedly far-fetched) dream that my boys will eventually earn full-ride scholarships to the school of their choice (not too far away, of course) and after earning their degrees (one in biology and the other in physics) my oldest will go on to play baseball for the St. Louis Cardinals and my youngest will become a Green Bay Packer. Along the way they will have easy lives, free of financial woes and surrounded by people who love them. And of course I get at least 10 grandkids out of the deal.

          But still, those hopes of mine can’t be the words I choose for their letters. If I boil it down, what I’m really wishing in that scenario is that they have easy lives. But I know that easy can be a very far cry from fulfilling. And I’ve learned through my own experience and the stories of others that if I’m looking for an easy path for my kids I’d be better off finding something else for them to do on Sunday morning and keeping them as far away from Jesus as I can. He tells us up front that following him is not easy. In fact, it’s incredibly difficult.

          William Willimon is a former dean of the chapel at Duke University. Many of us have probably heard his story about the conversation he had with a very upset parent. The father of one of his students had just found out that his daughter, a BS in mechanical engineering who he planned to send to graduate school, had decided to become a missionary in Haiti. The father was irate that she was going to “throw it all away,” saying to Willimon, “You are completely irresponsible to have encouraged her to do this. I hold you personally responsible.” Willimon pointed out to the father that if he wanted to know who was really responsible for his daughter’s decision, he should look in the mirror. He and his wife made the decision to have her baptized, they took her to church and Sunday School and they prayed for her. Willimon said “You are the ones who introduced her to Jesus, not me.” 

To be continued...