Parenting- The adventure

Do you need this sign in front of your house? Or maybe in your living room! There are times I know I feel like my three kids are wildlife!

Parenting is an adventure! A crazy wild adventure that somehow seems to begin to answer the question: "how can you love someone so much can they can also make you want to pull the last of your hair out!" (it is one of the mysteries of God!). There are times that I look at my kids, often when they are sleeping, and I think "Wow, God how in the world did you create something so wonderful, so perfect?" 

Then there are other times, when I see one shove his brother, or talk back, or not listen, or the other million things children do and I say "Wow God, how in the world am I going to help these little people be successful adults?"

Last night I was reading a Bible story to my three kids, the story of the prodigal son found in Luke 15: 11-24. My three kids are all still young and this is not the easiest story to "edit" for young children's understanding, but I did my best. 

I told them that a son asked his father for money, left home, spent all the money on bad things, made some bad choices, then he decided to become pig farmer.  This is the point where my oldest stopped me and said "what's wrong with being a pig farmer?"  I sighed, rolled my eyes a bit and told him that this son was Jewish, and in Jesus' time Jewish people did not eat pigs, they did not touch pigs, they thought pigs were gross.  What I wanted to tell him was that pig farming would be like someone going out today and working in a strip club, or being a drug dealer.  It was one of the most un-Jewish jobs there ever could be.  This son didn't just turn his back on his father, on his family, but he turned his back on his faith too.

BUT... Then came the moral of the story!

"No matter what you do, God our father will always love you! And no matter what, even if mommy and daddy get upset with something you have done, we always love you, and nothing that you could do would ever change that!"

Take a moment today to tell your wildlife, ahh your children...young or old, just how much you love them! No matter what!