I’ve had Steve Miller’s “Time keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping…into the future,” running through my head for the last month. I’m growing more and more aware of how little time I have left with my girls (no, I’m not being fatalistic, yet maybe more realistic). I keep looking at my oldest and thinking that if I double her age, she’ll be 16. And that’s weird.
But it’s not weird in an “I’ll be a parent of a teenager” (well, by then almost four teenagers!) kind of way, but weird in a “what will I have to show for our 16 years” sort of way. I am the queen of good intentions. I have shelves and shelves filled with my good intentions. I have all these sections in my brain filled with things I’m intending to do with my girls. I’ve had some of those sections filled since my oldest was born. Eight years ago.
It doesn’t seem like it took us that long to get to this point and I’ve not done a lot of what I’ve intended to do by now. This is what scares me. If I haven’t done it now, what makes me think that I will in the next eight years?
I know I’m depending on myself a lot for the outcome of my girls and that isn’t proper thinking, but I am human after all. I do trust in God’s sovereignty, but I’m also a slave to my own responsibility. And I’m weighted tonight by how those bump into each other.
Time is slipping into the future. I feel like I’m running out of it.
Half-Pint House 
i know that w/o the community of believers, we never would have made it…nor would our girls. we often had singles who would invite them (the pastor’s kids) out for lunch individually or do things with them as individuals for fun. they grew in other areas of their faith thro’ the eyes of those people. they weren’t the only ones who did that either. people who invited them over when we moved to new churches…one retired couple took them out to an old fashioned lunch counter. our oldest daughter still is friends with them. they support her as a missionary in ukraine. i have always appreciated those people who reached out to my children and ministered to them in ways that i as their parent wouldn’t be able to–as an adult friend but often closer to their age.
we need the community of believers not only for ourselves, but for our kids to relate to cross-generationally. they make up for our blindspots/sin.
of course, i’m not even counting the christian teachers, professors and college counselors they had along the way as well. certainly we were a powerful influence in their lives, but God used all these other people as well to reinforce and embellish what we were teaching in the home. m
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i know that w/o the community of believers, we never would have made it…nor would our girls. we often had singles who would invite them (the pastor’s kids) out for lunch individually or do things with them as individuals for fun. they grew in other areas of their faith thro’ the eyes of those people. they weren’t the only ones who did that either. people who invited them over when we moved to new churches…one retired couple took them out to an old fashioned lunch counter. our oldest daughter still is friends with them. they support her as a missionary in ukraine. i have always appreciated those people who reached out to my children and ministered to them in ways that i as their parent wouldn’t be able to–as an adult friend but often closer to their age.
we need the community of believers not only for ourselves, but for our kids to relate to cross-generationally. they make up for our blindspots/sin.
of course, i’m not even counting the christian teachers, professors and college counselors they had along the way as well. certainly we were a powerful influence in their lives, but God used all these other people as well to reinforce and embellish what we were teaching in the home. m
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