Parenting with Peers

Parents of teens quickly discover that their children's attitudes become tied to the attitudes of the peers who surround those young people. So as your children enter the middle school years, it is not enough to set forth healthy goals and wonderful opportunities or to model a dynamic, God-centered lifestyle. You cannot raise teenagers in a vacuum. You must build a community of peers who enter into those attitudes and opportunities you want your children to embrace.

You will not find this in most church youth groups. You need a group that is less focused on entertaining youth in a generationally-segregated setting. You need a group that is more focused on training youth to harness the strength and freedom of their youth to tasks in the real world that are vital to building the Kingdom of Christ. You need to find ways to give them real opportunities, usable skills and a vertical network of mentors and proteges of their own in addition to the horizontal network of peers.

My newly released book, Coaching a Club: 7 Secrets of Coaching a Successful Speech & Debate Club, demonstrates how to build such a community. Although the second half of the book is devoted to forensics teaching and coaching techniques, the first half details the characteristics of this kind of extraordinary network of partnerships and how to craft one in any setting. It is crammed with real life examples from creative minds across the country in their combined experience over ten years of working together.

After reading Coaching a Club, you may decide that joining the Christian speech and debate network of clubs is for you. But you might just as easily create a community around Internet marketing, media production, science innovation, humanitarian aid, business, or political action. Really the horizon is limited only by your students' desires and your vision.

Excerpts from Coaching a Club

Commitment to Character

"We can readily see that studying speech and debate will improve intelligence in these more traditionally academic categories. But if that is all we see, we miss the most important possibilities in forensics training. Forensics offers young people the opportunity to exercise those academic skills in an emotionally-charged social setting very much like the real world. It offers coaches a nearly unparalleled opportunity to train students in interpersonal and intra-personal intelligence. Taken together, these two are called “emotional intelligence” or EQ, and they encompass the ability to understand one’s own and others’ feelings and to use that information to make fine distinctions and to guide actions. Maturity in emotional intelligence is characterized by altruism and empathy. In Biblical parlance, we are talking about developing wisdom and character."

Commitment to Community

"Collaboration is the concept of the moment. From Linux to “Wikinomics”, it is becoming ever clearer that the future belongs to those who successfully create communities of interest and influence by exploiting the networking opportunities at hand. So when you are trying to decide which of the many possible activities your teen will pursue during those swift, precious high school years, you’ll want to choose those that give your teen maximum connectivity for the long term. Homeschool forensics has to be among the top 3 choices. We are not just training young people; we are helping to establish the grassroots network that will energize and support the next generation of power brokers."

Commitment to Continuity

"Continuity. As we look ahead, we don’t actually have the continued existence of the particular club in view. We are considering instead the continuing relevance of the vision, the continuity of relationships and the long-range usefulness of the skills developed here and now. Sono Harris of Oregon’s Rainmakers admits that the longevity of the speech club was not a part of the planning. “We just jumped in and took it a year at a time.” The Harrises were looking for a challenge that would be a good fit for their children’s gifts and callings. Their passion as they built Rainmakers was to help the students “learn to use words well” (John Piper) for active service in the world. Competitive forensics in the NCFCA not only gave them skills with words, but many of the auxiliary resources they would need to launch out on their own as well: visionary peers, intergenerational networks, resume development and business connections, even scholarship opportunities. We may develop our skills inside the Christian homeschool bubble, but they are emphatically not meant to stay there!"

Parenting with Purpose

My friend, Julie Ferwerda, has just released a new book, One Million Arrows. In it she outlines a vision to inspire us to raise powerfully spiritual children and to aim them at the heartaches of the world.

The book began with the compassion of one man - a poor man in India - who gathered up orphans from the streets and began to nurture them in the name of Jesus. "Papa" Thomas in Kota, India has now raised over 16,000 throw-away children from the streets of India and set them loose to extend the love that rescued them to others who still do not know the Author of love, Jesus. Profits from the book will assist "Papa" Thomas's work Hopegivers International to continue the work of turning throw-away kids into arrows in the hand of God.

Practical as well as visionary, One Million Arrows tells dozens of stories of parents just like you who have stepped up to the challenge. Read it and get your parenting rejuvenation vitamin!

And today, you can join the party by buying One Million Arrows in concert with hundreds of other Christians in an Amazon Book Bomb. Let's see how much we can contribute to this work in just one day.

Event Organizers' Heaven

Wow! Have you seen the speakers' bureau listing at Balancing the Sword? I just discovered it! Allen Wolfe has done a spectacular job of creating a huge database of speakers for the Christian and homeschooling community.

Not only does Allen list hundreds of speakers, but their profiles really give event organizers a good look at what they will likely be seeing and hearing if they invite a particular speaker. He includes a personal bio, accomplishments, a list of topics, former speaking engagements, and contact information galore. The Balancing the Sword speakers database makes conference organizers' jobs a breeze - well, almost!

And if you are a speaker, it's a great place to send potential clients to view your offerings.

See my full profile there - including descriptions of my NEW workshop series, Age to Age: Parenting for the Transitions of Life.

More About Reversing Babel

After conversing with some of my readers, I wanted to add the reflections we came up with together.

When you find yourself in a Babel-type power struggle. It doesn't help much to try to figure out who is to blame for moving the boundaries with new definitions or who is grasping for power wrongly. It could be either the parents or the teens. In the heat of the moment, no one is going to admit to either thing.

The healing action will be to call all parties to stop addressing the power struggle, to realize that they are not actually struggling against each other for supremacy. Instead they have been substituting their own agenda for God's call on their lives at that moment. Restoration will come when parties to the struggle again address God, returning to the place where they knew what God had commanded them to do and asking for His commission. Ask for His definitions.

In terms of Biblical imagery, leave Babel. What you invested in that tower will be a ruin. But as you seek God's commission, His empowerment to live in His way, you will find yourself in the same place as the disciples at Pentecost. Waiting, praying, refusing to take action or to continue in the action that engaged the power struggle until you receive His clear direction. Anyone who is in that prayer room will receive healing. Parents, teens or both. You don't have to agree together. At that place, the Holy Spirit is promised. He will come.

He will come, restoring understanding to those who "speak different languages", bringing a burning commission and joyful empowerment to move on.

Babel Reversed

Pentecost is often viewed as Babel Reversed. In both stories, there was a divine send-off, but what contrasts! Where at Pentecost God brought understanding to His people regardless of their language, at Babel (Gen 11) God confused the rebel's understanding by dividing the languages. Where at Pentecost the result was gathering and fellowship, at Babel the result was dispersion and alienation.

What made the difference? And can we learn from these examples to transform the experience of releasing our young adults into the gateway for renewed fellowship?

Notice first, that a dispersion for the purpose of extending God's rule in the world was God's aim both at Babel and at Pentecost. Whether He was dealing with rebels or with true sons, the send-out was non-optional. So it's clear that the progress both of individuals' maturity and the advancement of Christ's cause depends on a certain amount of healthy distance that will give scope to each person's activity. If we have been training our children to transform the world, they aren't going to be able to do that forever from our living rooms - under normal circumstances.

Our choices, both as parents and as children, seem to be: separating with alienation and confusion or separating with deeper unity and understanding.

At Babel, God addressed rebel sons. Their sin was that typical adolescent attitude, "I'm and adult now. I can do whatever I want!" They said, "Let us make a name for ourselves. Let us make a tower whose top reaches to heaven." They were grasping for power and independence without a commission, without reference to their responsibilities, without reference to their calling as sons of God.

It is difficult for young adults, as they come into adult-sized capacities, to wait to exercise those powers on their own. What they usually fail to realize is that larger capacities mean larger risks and responsibilities, not just more power. The true test of maturity is whether those young people will rein in those plunging stallions-within long enough to master them. Young adults must ask themselves: will I master the possibilities or will I be mastered by them instead? Will I determine to use my emerging power only at the command of God or will I use it up on my own agendas?

The result of racing out without a commission is alienation and confusion. You can see this in families when parents and teens are using the same words, but meaning different things. Or perhaps the definitions for rebellion or for forbidden activities and attitudes begin to morph. Whoever is changing the definitions is trying to control the situation. But the best they will be able to do is to limit the damage that those ungoverned powers can do.

If this is happening in your family, mourn, but not without hope. As God is gracious, there can be a Pentecost for you and yours beyond the separations.

Stay tuned for the flip side...

Pentecost Send-Offs

Considering Pentecost as a model for sending out adult children, we should take note of the particulars of how God set it up.

First and foremost, God initiated it. His people had just witnessed His unfathomable sacrifice for them at the Cross, and they were His, heart and soul. He gave them something mysterious to consider and time to think (but not much - remember there were only 10 days between Jesus' ascension and Pentecost. See Acts 1:1-3).

Pentecost was a notable event. There was no doubt that there had been some real ending and beginning. God did it with heavenly pomp and circumstance. His people were inspired, empowered & sent out.

Both of these characteristics of God's send-off should inform our send-offs. It is vitally important that parents initiate the send-off. There should be nothing of sons seizing power before their time, or usurping parental prerogatives. Release must not be a forbidden fruit; if it is, the road to healthy cooperation between the generations will continue to be a rocky one for many years.

You might want to compare the Fall with Pentecost. Scripture indicates that the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil was to be a sort of graduation present for when mankind had come to maturity. It wasn't going to be forbidden forever. The problem was that Adam seized it before both the maturity and the commissioning. Satan introduced the temptation long before Adam would have thought of it and long before he had enough experience to cope with it. So instead of a glorious commissioning, Adam received a curse in the very area where he sought independence and his relationship with God was broken past repair.

But Jesus makes everything new. He made a radically new relationship with us, and gave us a second chance to come into maturity and into full partnership with God. In fact we do see God at Pentecost sending out the young Church a little before her full maturity. At Pentecost, were those disciples able to face persecution and martyrdom? Did they really understand how to build a lasting organization? Or how to sculpt an appeal to the barbarians of Gaul or the philosophers of India? Probably not. But because of the ongoing relationship with the Spirit established at Pentecost, that group was able to succeed in all of those areas.

So we mustn't delay release indefinitely. Better far to send out a young adult a little before he is totally ready to whup the world, while he still maintains a good relationship with his parents, than to delay release until he has checked every box and has developed a resentment toward his parents that will cripple him in years to come. The relationship will supply the youth with the resources and perspectives that will help him fill out the deficits as he works. But a resentment leaves the youth only with the checked boxes and no ongoing inspiration.

So we release them. And it feels like we will lose most of our vital connections to them. Life will never be the same. It's true. But after they fly away, full of the joy of their youthful strength with the wind of our blessings under their wings, a mysterious new chemistry begins to operate.

At Pentecost, the disciples burst out of their prayer meeting aflame with the power and blessing of God's blessing, into the streets of Jerusalem. The result was an enormous ingathering of new sons. Not only did those 'children' who were sent out return, they continually, habitually, delightedly brought more into the family of God.

So it will be with us and ours. When our children know they have our blessing in their launch out, they return to us bringing many new sons. Not just in-laws. They bring fellow students, co-workers, Sunday school waifs, the isolated, the lonely. Your opportunities to influence and to help young people will greatly increase as your children leave.

So it's not time to sell the house and move to a 'sensible' apartment. It's time to enlarge the borders of your tent. God will be filling it with all kinds of new people, laughter, significance, relationship, usefulness. You will understand how deeply God rejoices when one of His sons brings others to Him. You will enter into His joy and a deeper partnership with Him as you (after all, one of His sons) join in filling His reunions with many new sons.

We will dream dreams. We will speak His words. We will dance.
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Hear Kim's lecture on transitional parenting on Quests & Homecomings
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Next time: Babel Reversed

Wind & Fire Parenting (part 2)

Is there a role for parents after their children's high school graduations? A role beyond "hands off!" and "get out your checkbook"? Yes! You are joining us in the midst of a series of posts exploring Pentecost as a model for parenting through the launching-out phase of family life. The thesis is that our role in our children's lives in their adulthood becomes more like the role of the Holy Spirit and less like a physically present Lord.

Caveat: The idea here is not that we take the place of the one, true Holy Spirit for our children, but that we can pattern our interactions with our adult children after the model of the Holy Spirit's work.

It is interesting to linger a moment considering the characteristics of fire, particularly if we are using it as a model.

• Fire is glorious. My mother often said that as an adult, what she desired and admired most in her parents was dignity. When our children become adults, they want to look back and see that they had glorious beginnings. You represent that beginning. And because they expect to be following you, your children will see your dignity, your glory as their future as well.
  
• Fire gives light. As such, it has been a symbol of truth, knowledge and wisdom. Your example, your teachings through the years and your wise perspective in the future all give light to your child as he ventures into the dusky unknown. Note that fire's light is not knowledge itself, but is that which shows what knowledge is. Fire is what illumines the page, but it is not the words on the page. As parents, we are no longer plain teachers; we are coaches who ask the questions that lead our youth to seize the truth for themselves.
• Fire is the first power source, our first incorporeal tool. Fire is heat, light, cooking, smelting, protection. As parents of adults, we move increasingly from being the initiators of projects with our children toward being the power source for the things they are called to do. Sometimes that does involve the checkbook, but it is so much more. They need encouragement if they are to slay the dragon. They need to be reminded of the heat of their passion to sustain them through the long, cold days slogging ahead to that glorious goal they set for themselves.

Next time: Biblical sightings and inspirations from the Spirit.

Wind & Fire Parenting (part 1)

I love our church! We have an energized liturgical worship and our pastors never miss celebrating milestones in redemptive history. Sunday Pastor Sweeting's sermon gave me plenty to consider concerning the events of Pentecost and the Holy Spirit's work in establishing, empowering and encouraging the Church.

Pastor Sweeting reminded us of a few characteristics of wind and fire as symbols of God's presence that we can mine as guidelines for our interactions with our older children. Remember though, as we look to the Lord for our inspiration, we are seeking to imitate His ways, not to replace Him in our children's lives. While we labor to work in the same patterns He uses, we do not labor to become the Holy Spirit to our children. It is a very dangerous thing indeed to try to take the place of God.

Wind is that original breath of creation, the Spirit hovering over the unformed earth, the voice of God speaking the world. For us as parents, our words of creation were mostly uttered to our children in their very early childhood. What did you tell your child about himself? about her potential? about the great things they would do together with God? about how you would work together when they grew up?

Careful the things you say! Children will listen! When my children were small, I told them that the Church needed to work to capture the imaginations of the world's people to bring them into obedience to Christ. My children heard that as a mission statement for our family and for themselves. My eldest is building a film company to train Christian storytellers to translate Christ's messages to challenge our culture. My second is studying music composition, writing for film and for worship to engage the hearts and imaginations of her hearers with the wonders of God. My youngest is still in preparation, but he loves humor. Already he works to show both the absurdity of life apart from God and His ways and the delight of life in Him.

But as our children gather themselves to leap into active service out in the world, we have another chance to breathe life into them. Blessings, commissions, commendations aren't just air. They are wind in the sails and under the wings. Wind is not the experienced captain of our children's ships, or even a steadying hand on the tiller of our children's lives. It's invisible. It's everywhere, but it's in the background. And wind does significantly effect the speed, direction and difficulty of those ships and lives.

So lift your face to the wind of the Holy Spirit. Feel how He is blowing in the lives of your children. Add your breath to that breeze, lest you create crushing turbulence for your child. Bless them and show them how to sense the Spirit's leading as they go.

Next time: Fire

Photo courtesy of http://www.bioneural.net/2007/02/12/at-sea-on-a-tall-ship/
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More resources for parenting through the transitions of life: Quests & Homecomings
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Celebrations that Sting

This month has been filled with graduations at our neck of the woods. Proud, tearful, hopeful reflections on achievement with a silent undertow of loss.

Appropriate that our commencement celebrations should roughly coincide with Pentecost. Pentecost was sort of commencement for God's people. Until then, His people had had a more physically present manifestation of God - the pillar of fire & cloud, the sacrifices, the Temple, Jesus the Incarnate Himself. Now they would have in invisible manifestation of His company, the Holy Spirit. Until then, they had a rigid, literally carved-in-stone Law. Now they would have it written in their hearts ready at hand to apply to every new situation. Until then, they had been concentrated in one place. Now they would be sent out to all those places whose tongues they spoke on that day - and beyond.

Just so with our fledgling children. No longer with they have us physically with them or hear us speaking the laws of our households. They will need to be able to carry those things in their hearts. They will need to seize that governance for themselves. No longer will our family be actually located in one place. Now our children will become outposts of our family in the cultures whose languages we have taught them.

It is a day when our children must come fully into their adult minds and responsibility, even if they still have a short season of preparation for a particular calling. Boot camp or college or even a professional internship are not places for children. Their minds must be mature; their determination to live out their convictions must be firm; especially if their skills need to be honed.

For the Church Pentecost was a day of great joy and empowerment, putting an end to the fear and loss of the crucifixion and those days of longing following Christ's ascension. Hopefully, we parents will find ways to imitate our Father as we send our children out into their tender maturity. They feel as unsure of themselves as the early Church on Pentecost. They need to leave the graduation experience sure that we will be wind and fire to them as they speak the breaking, healing Word into the worlds God brings them. They need to go out knowing, as Peter did speaking to thousands that first Pentecost day, that they can do things they never thought themselves capable of doing. They need to understand that the things they learned at Mother's knee and under Father's hand have greater power than they ever dreamed.

We easily identify with the Church at Pentecost, but perhaps, as we hope to do well at this end of our lives, we should try to see what Pentecost meant to the Father. Tomorrow...

Firey Harvest

I've been planting my kitchen garden with my darling, back-from-college daughter. While we are still settling the squash hills and refreshing the bachelor buttons, there is a tender harvest of rhubarb, mint and parsley, chives and lettuce. And don't forget the iris, the lilacs and the spirea fountaining over the fence to nourish the heart.

It's not the rich satisfaction of the full harvest; it is the earnest of things to come. It's the taste of hope, the poetry of promise. A chance to celebrate the day of small beginnings.

Sunday is Pentecost. 50 days after the Resurrection. The Feast of the firstfruits, when the early crops begin to come in. The day when Moses came down to the newly-freed slaves with the Law that would teach them to live as free men. The day when the Law was written not on stone but on hearts. The day when hundreds heard that Law and its Good News in blazing syllables of their mother-tongues. And such a young harvest it was! 3,000 souls, wasn't it?

In our family, we are looking for ways to enter together into the joys of what God has done for us, so we want to learn to celebrate Pentecost. We want our longings for home, for each other to be tied to our wonder at God's might and goodness.

So this Sunday, we will have the first barbecue of the season (fire!), and eat those first fruits (Tabbouleh, Rhubarb Crisp and ice cream) in the garden where the iris and lilacs are in riotous bloom. And we'll talk - even though we'll just be using the one tongue.

We'll read missionary stories to each other or tell of God's work in other cultures to translate His marvelous message of new beginnings for minds unused to such things. We'll talk of the dreams He has put in our hearts, and of the messages of His love that are burning in our mouths. And if He should send us guests that day, we trust they will hear His message in their own language.

Imitating the Perfect Father

As we are in search of a model for parenting, it's easy to dismiss God as a role model, because the Son He sent was perfect. We see in the relationship between the Father and the Son, perfect obedience, perfect mutual regard, perfect mutual respect, perfect joy, but we don't see how to get there.

However, God has another 'son', Israel. Throughout the Scriptures, God calls His people both son and daughter, and if we observe His dealings with them, we can see a pattern for parenting.

God brought His people out of Egypt as an infant. The first thing He did with them when they were clear of danger was to give them the Law and the Feasts - boundaries and celebrations. We understand the boundaries thing. We are continually clarifying and enforcing boundaries for our young children. They keep our children safe and train them in civilized behavior.

But celebrations are a striking innovation. What do regular celebrations accomplish in the life of a family? Well, in the case of Israel, celebrations reminded them of the good things God had done for them, of the adventures they had had together. Celebrations made being "at home" with God a place of rest, of feasting, of joy. When Israel was sent into exile in Babylon, it was the feasts' passing that made the people particularly homesick for both their land and their God.

Celebrations were God's recipe for homesickness. Hmmm...more about this next time.

Inevitable Goodbyes

Wherever I speak about homeschoolers, college prep and winning scholarships, at least 50% of the questions afterward are about the emotional reality of letting go of adult children. So I think this deserves study.

As I've looked around, the designations and descriptions of what comes after children launch are pretty grim: Empty Nest Syndrome, Helicopter Parents, Boomerang Children. Advice ranges from downright insulting

Just leave your student at college - hands off!... get out your checkbook... and try not to answer his phone calls too often. (Excerpted from an actual parent orientation at a prestigious private college which shall remain nameless to protect the innocent.)

to gleefully self-indulgent

Sell the house! See the world! Spend your children's inheritance!.

Even Christians don't do much better.

So I'll be ditching cultural norms and looking for Scriptural answers for this transitional time in families' lives.

First thing we'll need an operational label for what we are talking about. "Empty Nest" just won't cut it. Many of us won't actually have an empty nest before we have grandchildren. But we will have the sea change that happens when our children begin to launch out on their own, and we will experience our success in raising effective children as a loss.

Soooo... "Transitional Parenting"? "Age to Age Parenting"? "the Extending Family"? Any ideas from the peanut gallery? I'd love to hear your ideas!

Good Friday Visions of Hope

On this Good Friday, I have been struck by how firmly our hope for the future is rooted in the vision Jesus cast for His disciples as they shared their final meal together. As He was going to His death, He gave them a bright hope beyond that loss, a strong commission, something to hold in their coming grief and fear:

"You will remember when I rise, that I told you all about this."
"You have persevered with me in trials; you will sit with me in my Kingdom."
"I am preparing a place for you in my Father's house." 
"You must love one another as I have loved you."
"You are not of this world."
"I will send you a Comforter."
"You will do greater things than I have done."

Jesus' words that night not only sustained the disciples through that terrible, wonderful, world-wrenching weekend when Jesus conquered sin and death, but also helped them to endure, no, to triumph in the rest of their lives.

As we consider the endgame of parenting our children as children, as we prepare to send them into the dark world without us, we, too, must strengthen our youth to bear up under the troubles that will come their way because they belong to Our Lord. We must learn to cast a vision that will sustain them in their callings.  The strength of our vision-casting, the power of our blessing may be what will enable them to triumph over circumstances that would sink others.

Vision & Calling is the first of Countdown to College's new line of video presentations.  In it you will discover how to harness the power of blessing your children, and how to help them understand their callings as God's servants.  This one-hour DVD features a narrated PowerPoint presentation with hands-on explorations to do with your young people.  The presentation covers: personality, temperament, and gifts analyses; the special callings for men and for women; how to recognize God's leading for future direction and more! 

(Recommended companion resource: Countdown to College e-Forms Disk, which includes fill-able forms for the exercises in the PowerPoint presentation)

Transitional Parenting & the End of the World as We Know It

Our family is taking the Bible-in-90-Days challenge along with the rest of our church. The idea is to read twelve pages a day for 90 days and to get through the whole thing cover to cover by Resurrection Day. What a joy to be doing this all together! We are having great discussions at home and with church friends. It is the first time all the way through for our youngest.

We have reached the Gospels by now. This week, I was struck by the number of times Jesus had to tell His disciples that the Kingdom of Heaven would not be at all like people expected it would be. He compared the coming of the Kingdom to enormous natural disaster-type upheavals: earthquakes, the heavens rolled up like a scroll, mountains crumbling into the sea...Yet most of the time what He was describing wasn't the physical end of the world, but instead was the replacement of the strictly Jewish administration of God's covenant with men by the Church administration of that covenant. It was the end of the world as they knew it.

People must have been blinking and staggering. They could see Jesus and His gigantic capacity for everything they longed for in a leader. But they couldn't see this Kingdom. Rome wasn't falling at His feet. Well not even the Jewish leaders were falling at His feet. There was no army, no crown, no pomp. But there was something. Something so appealing, so poignantly satisfying, so invisibly magnetic. Something real but not yet really seen.

I can't help thinking that parenting young adults is a lot like that. The way they work out the principles parents have taught them doesn't look like we thought it would. So much of them is coming into dazzling focus, and so much is still hidden, still developing. They are as much potential as actual. It's like having double vision: sometimes they are all grown up; sometimes they are still children.

And our world is shifting under our feet. When our children were younger, we were responsible to cast a vision for them, to train them carefully. We had the privilege of creating opportunities for them to exercise their fledgling powers and for revealing their gifts as we saw fit. As they move into adulthood, that is less and less true. Increasingly, they take up the vision; they exercise their gifts in the places where they see needs. Sometimes when we direct them to apply themselves in a certain direction, we find they have already been there. Sometimes when we refrain from directing, we find they were oblivious to the problem.

It's hard to remember that they are already adults, but not yet. It's hard to keep in mind that it is no longer our job to keep them from stumbling, but to keep them learning from the skinned knees - with humble sympathy. The fact is that we are stumbling, too, in this phase of life. We are all experiencing the same earthquake. It really is the end of the world as we know it.

The best we can do - and it's not insignificant - is to make sure that their hand is in the hand of the One who is at the still center of our reeling world. Hang on and try to laugh together. When the new day is fully come, we will see the dawn together and be ready to build afresh together shoulder to shoulder. It is also the beginning of the new world.
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Find further expeditions into transitional parenting on Kim's new audio disk, Quests & Homecomings.
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