Singing a Silly Song

Now that I am a parent, I worry about how my parenting skills will shape my kids. As a parent I want to raise "good" kids that I have a "good" relationship with. I am very fortunate to have a wonderful relationship with my parents, and I want that kind of relationship with my kids. I often try to pinpoint what it was that my parents did right, so that I can reproduce similar results in my family. But, upon reflection, I don't think there's some magic list of things that you do to produce "good" kids. That would be too easy, we could all just go to the parenting book section and check out the 1 book on the shelf that has the magic list. But, I do know that when I was growing up, I cared more about what my parents thought of me, than what anyone else thought. I didn't have to worry so much about what my peers thought of me, because when I went home, I knew what my parents thought, and that was enough to help me feel secure in who I was. I think this was especially true in my relationship with my dad. If you know my dad, you know he is a very optimistic, complimentry, and enthusiastic person. Well, this was especially true in how he treated me. As a result, when I was in junior high, and I went to a dance, and no boys wanted to dance with me . . . I knew deep down inside that it didn't matter, because when I went home, I knew that my dad was there, and he believed that I was the prettiest, smartest girl at the dance and I was just too good for any of them. So I didn't need to win the "approval" of any of the boys at the dance, because I had all the approval I needed, the approval of my dad. This was also true on the flip-side. I worried more about disappointing my parents than disappointing anyone else. I would have much rather disappointed my friends by choosing not to drink, than to drink and therefore disappoint my parents. I guess it’s not to different from how our relationship with God should look. Regardless of whether the relationship with our parents reflected these ideas, ultimately this is what our relationship with our eternal parent should look like. We should always care more about what God thinks of us than what anyone else thinks, and we should care far more about disappointing God than anyone else. Because once you know how much you are loved, you don't have to look for acceptance anywhere else, and you certainly don't want to disappoint someone who loves you. So maybe, when it seems hard to care more about God’s opinions than people’s opinions, what we’re really having a hard time with is realizing HOW MUCH God LOVES us! So as a parent, I pray I will take advantage of every opportunity to express my love to them and as a child of God, take advantage of accepting and realizing God’s love for me.