Wisdom of Proverbs

Steve sent me this proverb this morning - Proverbs 29:1 - "He who is often rebuked, and hardens his neck will suddenly be destroyed and that without remedy." I sent him a message back asking "which child are you speaking about" since that readily applies to 4 at this moment. One has left the house and decided to live the life of a partying drug addict it appears. One begins the process of counseling/church discipline today for defiance/disrespect issues but his answer instead is to enlist in the military so he doesn't have to obey rules (yes, that is funny to the rest of the world). Another's mantra is "Its too hard" no matter what is asked of him - the world is a place to play. And one more assumes the world should revolve around her and gives us all the daily pleasure of a raging temper tantrum (she is a teenager not a toddler). On a more positive note, a different adult child on her own told us the other day that she would give anything to go back to cooking and gardening and being in the home, even longs to wear skirts again. In light of this, I was able to have a discussion with my children about a couple of things. First, what's in your heart will come out when you are on your own, as is evidenced by our one who very quickly adopted her bio family's legend of intense drug usage and law breaking. Another thing I told them is you have to choose how to live your life and being on your own isnt always as fun as you think it will be. You can choose to follow the path of the culture for self gratification or you can follow the path of Jesus and have a more difficult but ultimately rewarding life.

We attempt to shelter our children from some of the damaging things in our culture and we expect them to follow the "narrow road" with us while they are at home. That means they cannot do everything their contemporaries in society can do but we do try to prepare them for life on their own, knowing they will have to face the temptations of the "never going to grow up" culture we live in - life is about entertaining ourselves it seems. We want them to learn to work hard since hard work is a blessing. We want them to be self sufficient. We want them to love learning. Most of all, we want them to be able to stick to and defend what they believe, even if it disagrees with what we have taught. We have told them that if they choose to follow the life we have chosen or a life in similar fashion, it will be hard, they will be ridiculed and questioned. In the end, at the Judgment seat, I would much rather Jesus say to me, "Well done, thy good and faithful servant" than have the approval of the culture around me and be accepted for "fitting in" - we certainly want to see our children in that same category and so we pray for their hearts and continue plodding along on our daily path of training, even in the midst of some big obstacles... and with that note - a new day begins...:-)