I think the end game has always been to strip away all of my hope….in myself, my resources, the wisdom of my life experience. They are my life lines attached to stakes in beach sand. My mindset has been that I have not lived the hard way to come out of the other side more stupid than I was….but I think I am….less smart. I am learning that I have placed more value on what I have learned than what it was worth. I wonder if I am moving in a direction that is opposite to where I should be going. I have tried (unsuccessfully for the most part) to teach my children to be independent and self-reliant. I have tried to communicate in word and deed to leave the safety of their childhood home and begin a journey and adventure of their own. Make mistakes, own them, learn from them, become wiser, and maybe someday be as brilliant as I am.

Here’s the irony. God raises his sons and daughters to abandon self-reliance and independence and become dependent on him. I have tried to grow boys and girls into societally functional men and women. God on the other hand seems to want to keep us children….forever dependent on him.

I have a friend who once illustrated the child raising experience like this. He said that when children are young we hold them tightly to protect them. As they mature we loosen our hold a bit to give them some freedom of movement and choice. As children they learn that the stove will burn them, dirt doesn’t taste good, not all blue liquid is Kool-Aid, and just because an object may fit up their nose doesn’t mean it should be placed there. Our grip…our hold must continually and gradually loosen as the days and years pass. There comes a point in time whether we recognize it or not when our children leap from our grasp. This is the culmination, the apex, the goal and end game of what we attempted…for them to be independent of me and their mom. It’s a good moment in time when we recognize for the first time that our child is grown. They don’t need me for their survival. There’s comfort to a dad’s heart when he realizes that after he is a memory to his children that they will be okay without him. In the meantime I just hope that I don’t become utterly irrelevant. I like to think that I’m a fun guy to have around.

It seems to me that God’s grasp on me always allows freedom of movement and choice. His hope for me is that I won’t leap from his hand…that I will always choose him. I suppose the difference is that God will never be, like me, a memory or irrelevant. My children don’t have the benefit of parents who will always be present and available so we try to teach them how to survive without us. Since God is eternal he raises us to be forever reliant and dependent on him.

God isn’t growing me into someone who needs him less and less. The opposite is true. So what about my catalog of life experience that goes ignored or rejected by others less experienced? My life experience will never be as valuable to someone else as it is to me. From time to time someone may find some benefit from it but such people will always be the exception to the rule. People, others, my children will in all likelihood be best taught by their own life experience. There comes a moment when we must recognize that we didn’t live through all of that (whatever it was) so that we are well equipped old people for the purpose of teaching younger people how to live. My life experience really isn’t a tool. It is the story of how God won me. It’s okay if I’m the only one who ever understands that.