I don’t really do “arbitrary”, I’ve always been a calculated, over-thinker; this hasn’t always led to the best decisions–I did carefully weigh the decision to jump off our roof with a garbage bag as a parachute before my mom read my 9-year-old mind and caught me on the way out of the attic window–but I am not spontaneous. Parenting is no exception, but I like to think I’m a little wiser then my 9-year-old-roof-jumping self. I feel I’ve made our goals as parents fairly clear in this space (really I believe God has laid them out for us quite well and there’s none to add to it), and how our days play out (hopefully) fit into that framework: to teach James to submit to Jesus Christ as his God and Savior and to seek to glorify him in everything. There are thousands of opinions on parenting styles, sleeping patterns, diaper choices and make-your-own-everything-or-be-scorned-forever-mom’s out there, but apart from Scripture’s clear definitions and commands for parents those things are about as important as drums in church–we make a very big deal about them, but they are minor. Parenting is a very strange animal these days, there is an undo amount of pressure in areas that really don’t matter, and not nearly enough in areas that are a matter of eternity. While I have my opinions on natural births vs. epidurals; cloth vs. disposable; circumcision; and public vs. private vs. homeschooling; and I think they are worth discussing, and in some cases debating, they are not things that anyone can say “this is how it must be done”. But in areas of discipline, God’s centrality, and the marital relationship’s impact on children, God is very clear on the ideals and his instruction for us. But it is much easier to argue the importance of cloth diapering rather then touch on hot topics such as marriage and God’s design, or discipline, or Jesus Christ’s Lordship. I won’t receive angry emails when I write about making your own baby food; but I will for writing that marriage was designed by God specifically to be between one man and one woman, and anything that doesn’t conform to that is harmful to children; and I will lose “friends” when I say that the most functional home is one ordered with the husband submitted to Christ, loving his wife and the wife submitted to her loving husband, respecting him and the children warmly under that authority; and I will make people angry when I say most of our society completely devalues children from conception and will never regain ground on seeing them as people until murdering them is outlawed. But what I do here is pondered deeply, weighed against scripture and prayed about hourly, and the hearts of our children and our own, our eternal destiny weighs in the balance; so while my popularity, though scant already (I’m not deluded in thinking I have a large following) will dwindle, I’ve weighed the consequences, and just as my 9-year-old self deemed it worth it to jump from our roof despite risking injury, I’m willing to face the consequence of writing the unpopular because I think it is the most important, and there is little voice for it now. Because it doesn’t matter if our homes look like a page from a magazine, or if we’ve made the latest pin on Pinterest, whether we’ve crafted our children’s stuffed animals or purchased them from WalMart, our children’s souls are at stake and for that I won’t remain silent. Obviously I stated the above issues as pure assertion, but I will be taking the next few months to flesh out and argue in their defense, this is merely an introduction.
If you do wish to discuss these topics and those that will follow this post, please use discretion in your comments, be civil, respectful and reasonable. I will delete comments that are not under those guidelines.
And just because, here’s cute pictures of James.