Kids

I haven’t written much recently. I’ve been spending time with my kids.

Josh and Julie and their children Moses and Lucy are spending May with us as the last leg of their three-month visit back to the States from their home in Turkey. Joy is home from college for the summer from Oklahoma. John and Suzanne arrived Tuesday evening from Illinois for a week. We just picked up Jed at the airport from Tennessee. And Jeremiah and Becky and their children Isaiah and Malachi are on the road from West Virginia as I write this. Four sons, a daughter, three daughters-in-law, three grandsons and a granddaughter will be spending the Memorial Day weekend with us.

So I’ve taken kind of half-vacation time and I’ve been trying as much as I can to hang out with my kids and grandkids.

It’s an interesting thing. Many people have told Paula and me that we have wonderful children - they all love the Lord, they all earned major scholarships to college, I could go on. A lot of folks have asked us what the secret is to raising such great kids. We have even been asked to teach a parenting class. But as soon as we start talking about what we did and what we feel was important in raising our kids, people don’t want to hear it. We had to cancel the parenting course after the second class because people stopped coming.

I’m on the subject now, so I’ll go ahead and say it. It seems to me the one key element is spending time with your kids. Lots of time. Sure, “quality” time, but also lots of quantity time. Paying attention. Stopping what you are doing to be with them.

For instance, just as I was writing that last sentence I heard Moses waking up from his nap. The middle generation was out for some time by themselves. So I dropped what I was doing and Paula and I spent the next forty-five minutes or so with Moses, until his parents came home.

I believe that during the twenty or so years that a person is privileged to raise children, nothing else is so important. And the way that is played out is to spend time with them, paying attention to them, interacting with them in ways that teach them by example to interact with other people.

So that’s why I haven’t written on this blog in a while. And that’s why I’m stopping here. Gonna go be with my kids.

P.S. A lot of neat stuff happened during our prayer week, including some pretty awesome healings. I wrote about it in the Trinity Church June newsletter. You can read it online at the church website, trinityannapolis.org.