Thursday, January 29, 2009

One Down and Prayer Requests

Well, I finally finished The Age of Opportunity, and I will definitely be buying this one to re-read in the future. I was so challenged by this book to reexamine my motives and goals in parenting, and it was humbling to face how often I am shortsighted in how I handle difficulties with the kids: reacting to them as burdens or bothers and feeling exasperated to have to deal with the same problems and issues again and again. If I had to choose one thing to take away from the book it would be this:

"See the difficult, troublesome, problem situations as God-given opportunities to develop a biblical mind in your teenager."

Tripp follows this instruction with a powerful scenario. A parent came to him and related that she had found pornography in her son's room. Tripp advised the parents to not go in "with guns blazing" but to thank God that He had allowed their son's sin to come to light, and to try to help their son understand the "thoughts and motives of his heart that led him into this sin."

This way of parenting is so rooted in humility (we are sinners just like our children!) and a sense that our children are not really 'ours', they are God's. I loved the exhortation to treasure the high calling that Christian parents have.


Switching gears, I wanted to share a couple of prayer requests. First, My friend Julia's husband was laid off from his job earlier this week. Please pray for them as they trust God and wait on Him to make his plans known. And you can pray the exact same thing for us (that we would trust God and wait on Him) as Sprint is getting ready to lay off another 8000 employees in the next 2 months. It will be interesting...I'll keep you posted.

3 comments:

Jenia said...

We will keep you all in our prayers during this time at Sprint, please do the same for our family as well:)

Anne said...

We'll be praying for ALL of you, VanHorns and Dennis'. Keep us updated, ok?

Candice said...

Thank you, guys! We're praying for your family, too, Jenia.