Children, Don’t Forget
Lanette held her Sunday school book in front of me and pointed at the assignment. I read it silently. “Ask your mom or dad to tell you five things that they don’t want you to forget.”
I can’t answer something like that quickly. How does one distill all the life stuff into five compact statements?
I don’t remember just what I told her, but here are five things I wrote soon afterward that I don’t want my children to forget.
· Your personal standing with God is the most important thing in the world.
· Just because someone is doing it differently than you are doesn’t mean they’re doing it wrong. Neither does it mean you have to do it that way.
· Everyone has hidden battles and hidden pain, hard things they are dealing with that nobody else knows about. Be kind. Give them the benefit of the doubt. Honesty, kindness, and respect are some of the most beautiful virtues you can cultivate. The way others treat you isn’t of paramount importance. The way you treat others is.
· I will always, always love you, no matter where you are or what you do. If my heart is broken by choices you make, that brokenness is love’s presence, not its absence.
· Letting go and allowing you to create your own life is one of the greatest gifts I can give you.
Several years later, on another Sunday morning, it’s Jayna doing that same lesson. “Mom, here it says our mom or dad are supposed to tell us five things they don’t want us to forget.”
Ah, yes, I remember this. I was cleaning up breakfast, and again I wondered—how do I come up with the five most important? As I washed baked oatmeal from bowls and wiped counters, this is what I told her.
· Everyone is worthy of kindness.
· Your relationship to God is the most important thing in the world.
· You have value.
· Stay open to other points of view.
· Hard is not impossible.
Later that day, after church was over and lunch cleaned up, I searched out what I had written several years before.
I was fascinated, looking over it and comparing the lists. Three of the things are essentially the same—respect others, be gracious with differing points of view, and love God. These priorities will not change. I would say a similar version of these same thoughts if another child were to ask me the question years later.
Some of the answers, however, are different. Perhaps this is because my view of what is most important changes with life’s changing seasons. Just like my children, I continue to learn as I go through life. Probably my answers to Lanette and my answers to Jayna reflect what issues seemed big to me at the time. This is not wrong. Life ebbs and flows; its most fundamental principles do not change, but some of the secondary focuses may.
I did not say this to Jayna, as I did to Lanette, but it, too, will always be true, and I don’t want them to forget—I will always love my children. I have experienced the love of a Father who is patient when I’m not perfect, and I pledge to give that same gift to my children.
As life escorts them from juniors to youths to adults, my children will learn their own most important things. The answers they give when their own children ask what is most important may be different from the things I tell mine today. But I hope at least three of them are similar: keep your words and actions kind and respectful to everyone; remember that yours is not the only point of view; and always, always, love God most of all.
