Keep the long view as a parent

Hello and Happy 2020 from Slugs & Bugs!

We all know, parenting is a hard and messy business. Truly, I get it wrong much more than I get it right, and it doesn’t take long for most parents to feel like a failure in some respect. 

So, at our best we find our comfort and our identity in Jesus, and we entrust our kids to him. But that is HARD and super scary too. That’s why I asked my daughter, if I could tell you guys a little about the phone call we had last night. Because encouragement from the road ahead can be like water to a parched throat. Many of you already know her as the fiddle player from Slugs & Bugs shows. She had a hard middle school experience and a miserable time in high school. We wept with her, we prayed for her, we shook our fist at God.

Well, now she is a freshman in college, and she is having the best year. First semester she made a bunch of new, wonderful friends (they even came out to a S&B show!), and this semester she is over the moon about her courses and her professors. She's applying for a grant to study Tolkien’s Elvish, meeting with professors about her senior thesis, comparing syllabi to discern how to organize her time, and just generally acting like a big, responsible person.

Even more importantly, she has begun to exhibit fruit of the Spirit that is wonderfully jarring to witness. We have begun to see Jesus through her, in little ways she loves me and her mom and her brothers. Now, she ain’t perfect by a long shot. But that’s not the point. The point is, if you are a parent out there, and you’re struggling with one of your kids or all of your kids... you aren’t crazy to stay in the fight.