What Is It

I miss the younger years of parenting. Not me being younger. But the kids being younger. Don’t get me wrong, I love parenting teenagers. As a parent, that’s my sweet spot. But I miss when they were two, three, four and five years old.
When they were that young, everything was new to them. And it was fun helping them experience those new things. Like jumping off the side of a pool. As a parent, you know the fun and joy they will experience. But for them, they haven’t experienced that joy quite yet. And so their focus was on the fear they feel. They’d look at me. Look at the ledge and the drop to the water. Then they’d look back at the cement they were standing on and would start to walk backwards to what was familiar. But after a few words to make them feel better and helping them “jump” into the water, they’d eventually trust their mommy and daddy and jump themselves.
Then, in the very same summer after trusting their daddy and jumping into the pool, I remember taking a trip to a water park with friends. You know what’s at water parks, right? Yup. Water slides. Once again, as a parent, I could look at that slide and my kids and know the joy they’d experience going down that slide into a pool of water. So I took the kids up to the top of the slide, talking up the excitement and how fun and cool it was going to be to slide down the water slide into a pool of water. But once we got up to the top of the slide, fear crept back in and they insisted on not going down the water slide. They instead wanted to go back down the stairs to the familiarity of what they already knew.
I don’t suggest this as a parent, but when Carter was four or five, I actually picked him up, sat him down, then pushed him down the slide as he screamed throughout the process. Once down, he came running back up to go down the slide by himself.
Time and time again through different experiences our kids would have to learn to trust and depend on their parent over and over again even though we’d proven trustworthy through previous experiences. Time and time again they’d crave and desire the familiar over choosing to depend and trust the call of their mommy and daddy. That doesn’t change with age. And it hasn’t changed throughout the years. What is true now, was and is true hundreds of years ago.
Check this out:
The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt. In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death. Exodus 16:1-3
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Thank you for checking out our family channel. We're a family of four that lives in northern Indiana. For 23 years I’ve worked with students and families in some form or another… as a student pastor, juvenile probation officer, director of a Boys and Girls Club, and I currently have my own teenagers (did I just say that? I have teenager(s)… not just one, but two!?) During those 23 years it was always my goal to help students find Jesus, find what they’re gifted in and run with it. It’s what makes my heart beat fast. It’s one of the things I still love to do. Deep down, my heart beats to help people… to help people find and grow in their relationship with Jesus, and to help families connect to each other and Jesus together. Jami is the communications director at Granger Community Church. Todd also writes and produces content and videos for toddruth.com. We're looking forward to sharing our life with you guys on the Ruth Family vlog channel.
We have lots of laughs and love adventures, even if it's sometimes only in our backyard. We'll be open and honest as we share our life journey with you guys in our family vlog. Look for a new family vlog every Saturday morning! We hope you tag along. #familyvloggers #familyvlog #familychannel #bible