Parenthood may be the most dangerous adventure any of us ever undertake.  We know wonderful young adults who have come out of terrible homes.  We also know devout, spirit-filled parents with children who cause them much pain.  Everybody has ideas on how to bring up children.  Sometimes it does seem to us that those without children often feel they are the greatest experts.

For instance, before our first child, Jim, came along, we knew exactly what kind of parents we intended to be.  We planned to be potters and shape the “clay” we had been given into a magnificent adult.  Instead, we quickly realized that when it came to parenting, we were big time bunglers.  No matter.  Young Jim seemed interested only in how things worked.  He wanted to know about science – only science.  If it didn’t involve science, it didn’t matter.  When he began to toddle, I learned to listen for the quiet.  If things got too quiet, I ran to find out what he was up to.  One day I went to another room while he rearranged the pots and pans in the kitchen.  When I returned moments later, he proudly displayed all of the canned goods, arranged by size with labels removed.  We had surprise suppers for a month.

Who was this child and where did he come from?  Instead of being potters, we were more like gardeners with a mystery plant and no instructions.  We ran along behind him while he consumed one branch of science after another.  We sat in the museum while he took classes on astronomy.  His dad helped him launch model rockets while I prayed until they came home with their fingers intact.  In junior high, he put together a simple computer from a kit.  We took care of the burn when he absent-mindedly stuck his soldering iron behind his ear instead of his pencil.  A favorite high school teacher spent one summer helping him get a ham radio license.  When he got a chemistry set for Christmas, we held our breath through his experiments and tried to stay calm when he announced that something had “slightly caught fire.”  The word we most dreaded to hear coming from his room was “Oops.”  Today, he has degrees in Lasers and Physics and makes his way working for a large scientific testing company.

Our older son did not get great parenting from us.  We had absolutely no idea how to be parents.  He did get all of our love and unending years of our prayers.  In return, he taught us the truest thing about parenting; All children are mysterious, exciting, joyful gifts, meant to be nurtured, loved and treasured.  When asked her secret, one elderly woman who had parented many successful, talented children replied that she “kept pouring love in until it spilled out of them.”  We’d like to add that even now that our children have become adults, we keep pouring in the love and praying that God will somehow correct all the mistakes we only now realize we made.