Generation NeXt Parenting

LONGINGS...

As a member of Generation X (those born between 1961 and 1981), I know what it is like to be in the middle of my parent’s divorce and what it is like to be a latchkey kid and come home to an empty house everyday. So now, as a parent, one of my longings is to be more present in my children’s everyday lives and to give them a better quality of life.

As parents we want to give our kids more than we had. We want them to participate in the extracurricular activities for which our parents didn’t have the interest or money, or time for. We want to protect them from growing up too quickly and want to give them the right education, the right morals, and the right attitudes to succeed in life.

If you’re like me, you may feel the ideal life, the perfect family, is out there—somewhere … just beyond your grasp. That if you could just get your priorities straight, read the right parenting books, be a good role model, and choose the right playmates for your kids all your hopes would come true.

These longings aren’t bad, of course, when we line them up with our holy God, and realize that our plans matter little in comparison to His. And what are His plans? Listen to this:

“Remember your history, your long and rich history. I am God, the only God you’ve had or ever will have—incomparable, irreplaceable—from the very beginning telling you what the ending will be, all along letting you in on what is going to happen, assuring you, I’m in this for the long haul. I’ll do exactly what I set out to do.” Isaiah 46:10-11 (The Message)

THIS is the childhood the Lord has for our kids. Not the childhood we wished we’d had, or the perfect life we can never attain, but the blueprints and the form He has designed for them.

God has longings for your children even greater than your own … and He’s willing to tell you these things if you seek Him out. Why don’t you try it?

©Tricia Goyer, Generation NeXt Parenting

posted by Tricia Goyer @ 10:19 AM