Coming each Wednesday from June 5 through July 10, from 7:00-8:30pm) BridgeWay will offer our newest Book-Of-The-Quarter on the topic of parenting. Based on the book “Parenting – Getting ‘It’ Right” by Andy and Sandra Stanley, our workshop will touch on a variety of themes essential to parenting (most of which you can guess. Discipline, anyone?) During the summer, we’ll also amplify our “Family-Life” themes through periodic blog-articles, social media clips and tips, of course in our Sunday morning teaching, and a variety of supplemental resources (another great book we’ll be referencing a lot is “Spiritual Parenting” by Michelle Anthony.)
Unfortunately we aren’t able to offer child-care during this BOQ, but will be offering an online option. Sign up today to let us know you’re in! Of course, this would be a perfect opportunity to invite someone from outside the BridgeWay family to join us.
Here’s a short devotional article to get us started.
I’ve journaled throughout my life, and because of that I have vivid memories of being a young dad. Here was my entry from October 12, 1988, when our daughter Hannah was just two.
“Mark this as the first day when Scooby made a successful use of her little toilet! Let the earth rejoice and all that is in it! For months, Hannah has developed the habit of sitting on her seat with books or crayons, copying daddy in his style. But not quite getting the same results. But when daddy checked things out this afternoon, well… I found something besides half a roll of toilet paper in her little stool. Alright!”
It was somewhere in this early stage of fatherhood where I had an epiphany of sorts, as I listened to a beautiful song called “Same Girl” by one of the most popular Christian artists of that time, Twila Paris (have a listen here. Get past the 80’s production and let the song bring a tear to your eyes.). It was a song about learning to see an elderly person not as she is now, but as she was when she was younger, a child running down a hill, or a young bride walking down the aisle.
The song came on just as Hannah was screaming demonically at my knees in the kitchen, howling “No!” to something I had asked her to do (prompting me to think, “Creature, I could take you out right now if I chose.”) Listening to Twila sing, I began to weep, because suddenly in my mind’s eye, I was seeing Hannah, no longer as a two-foot-tall writhing phantasm at my feet, but as a beautiful, fully-grown woman. And I sensed the Spirit of God say it that moment, “You’re raising my daughter for me.”
That revelation changed my parenting from then on. We don’t raise children, as parents, we’re raising future adults. We’re guiding them on a journey, where if we get close to the mark (and no parent on earth ever hits the bullseye, we only get it “rightish” says Andy Stanley) – then we will give to the earth a gift – a reasonably responsible, self-governed, beautiful, rational, God-fearing soul. With whom, if God allowed, her mother and I might enjoy a very unique lifelong love and friendship.
It’s important early in the odyssey of parenting to decide what the “it” of parenting is (and so the title of the Stanley’s book.) They write:
“Our observation is that most parents are so busy parenting, they never stop to consider what they’re parenting to. What they’re parenting for. They’re too busy to stop and consider the end game. The goal. The prize. The win…Safety? Obedience? Graduation? To make you proud? To get to the NFL? Broadway? To have the things you never had?… If you don’t define and choose your it, it will be chosen for you.”
In her book “Spiritual Parenting”, Michelle shares a similar story of coming to a crisis point early as a young mom, where the Lord course-corrected her understanding of parenting. That its purpose was not to cause people to marvel at what a great mother she was. Or even to spend all her time managing and controlling her children’s behavior. There was something much deeper that she was to attend to in her parenting.
As we begin our time together on June 5th, this will be one of the first questions we’ll ask ourselves. What’s the point, the goal, of your parenting? What’s your “it”? (The question applies not only to physical parenting, but to spiritual parenting, i.e. discipleship, as well.)
We’re going to have fun getting stretched this summer!