Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Loving This Season of Parenting

As I stood in the kitchen this past weekend talking to my son and my son-in-law, I had one of those surreal moments. "I'm talking to two friends", I thought to myself, "who happen to also be related to me." As we were hoping to have children and then had them and then were raising them, Sharon and I would talk about our goal for them. Those goals never included the type of degree, if any, they would receive from college or the career they would choose. It was always about them loving God and loving others, including Sharon and I. We wanted to always be parents, never buddies, but we did want to have our children be the type of people with whom we could be friends. By God's grace, and with some intentional relationship building, we seem to have arrived there. We will always have the role as parent, and that is as it should be. But we have the added layer of having grown children with whom we like to hang out and, as an added bonus, who like to hang out with us. We aren't pals or peers, but we are friends. And that's a good thing.

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