A while back, a friend of mine explained to me why, after years of being an almost atheist, he returned to the Roman Catholic church. It had little to do with a sense of religious conviction, or a sense of penitence, or even a desire to have something to do on a Sunday morning. He returned to Christianity because of his kids. He'd been raised Catholic, and his wife was raised Catholic, and they both turned out OK. When he had kids, he had to raise them Catholic too, because, and this is a quote: "You can't take chances with your kids."
I believe he was wrong. I care for my kids so much that I have to push myself to take risks with them.
I'm not talking recklessness. I don't dangle my kids over cliffs, and I didn't let them drive when they were six. We put caps on the electric outlets and a gate on the stairs when the kids were small enough to accidentally fall down the stairs. However, there are a lot of people who don't seem to see the difference between letting a five-year-old play with a loaded nail gun and letting a teenager surf the internet without sitting over their shoulder.
Now, this is not cut and dried. Each kid is different, and for some, walking to the park really is risky. And each parent is different. I'm sure the kids think their mom and I didn't let them do enough when they were little. (They certainly thought so at the time!)
You do the best you can, and trust God. For some parents, it takes all their will to let the kids do their homework without constant supervision. Maybe they're right. I'm not interested in being the best dad. I'm interested in being the best dad I can be.
I do the best I can, and trust God. I refrain from comparing myself to others, but I stay open to learn from them. I love each kid as if he or she were my only kid. I take risks with them, partly so that they realize that I believe in them, partly so that they get to learn how to succeed and fail at something that matters, and partly because it makes me a better man, even when it's scary or painful. I fail at all of those things to some degree, but I trust in forgiveness from God, and I hope in forgiveness from them.
I love my kids too much to play safe. I think God loves me (and them) that way too.
It's been a while since I did one of these creative writing prompts. Part of the reason for this was that my daughter was participating in National Novel Writing Month, and I didn't want to "run up the score" while she was doing that. It's also true that I had a great number of other responsibilities and claims on my time.
This work by Timothy H. Ruppel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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