Trading Up

This is the last week of school. The boys are so excited and I am excited for them. Ivan especially cannot wait to call himself a first grader instead of a kindergartener.

It’s the last Monday to have this. This today, with all it’s weaknesses is still so precious. Today I have a kindergarten boy with so much to learn and so far to go it seems like he’s a sponge with no limit to what he can hold.

He is so soft hearted, so determined, such a dreamer, I know that just as a sponge is capable of washing and refreshing, Ivan too will empty himself someday to the glory of God. I want to fill him with Living Water, so that when he spends himself for others they will never thirst again.

I have a 2nd grade boy with a pure hunger for information. He’s taking in so much from books I feel like I’m looking at Eric Carle’s Very Hungry Caterpillar chewing through every page he can find.

So much like that caterpillar, I know that as he matures, he will one day cocoon himself from me, he will close his door more often, hide away to process instead of talking my ear off, he will not shy from life, but he will need the quiet to hear from God for himself.

And when that door is opened again and he emerges there will have been a metamorphosis that I will have had nothing to do with.

I’ve thought a lot about trading lately. How as a parent I have been trading each step for the next. Trading nursing for spoons, diapers for superhero underwear and strollers for admonitions of “slow down” and “keep up.” How easy it is to desire the next step, how natural it is to be excited for every ounce of progress and ease of dependency.

Yet…I wonder…have I made a fair trade?

Did they offer me independence before I had finished the task at each stage? I think in those early trades it’s easier to feel satisfied with the performance. I don’t wonder if I gave them enough milk to make them grow into solid food eating toddlers.

But here…in the precious today. This precious Monday, am I making a trade without having finished my responsibility at the current stage?

They don’t complain, if Ivan is missing a few drops of Living Water, he doesn’t know it. But I know, I know that his personality will spend all that he has and the idea of giving something worthy is not just about others, it is about him as well. This is my opportunity to fill him with that life giving water that will not only satisfy others, it will reproduce in him. Nothing else will do that. All other sources run dry, poison and erode the vessel.

If Owen has mixed in superfluous information along with the Word, it doesn’t hurt him, even information that is less than Godly can be read without it changing him right now. Today though, is my only chance to influence those wings that will carry him to great heights. He will certainly soar, there is no question in my mind. I appeal to his purpose though, I appeal to God’s direction and sovereign care for him and today asks me, “will he leave simply ‘a great man,’ or ‘a man of God?'”

If I make my trades quickly, I might find my hands more free, but I’ll be redeeming so little. There are no returns with childhood. There are no “undo” buttons on what lightens or darkens the gray matter we are commissioned to protect in our children.

There is a wealth of wisdom: Proverbs, Psalms, Timothy, John, Samuel, Joshua and so much more, and there are hundreds of tired mornings, waiting to offer me trades. Give up wisdom for sleep? Give up influence in their lives for some time to myself? Give up opportunities to offer them Living Water and the Bread of Life for activities that keep them busy, social, involved, committed and developed in all manor of wordly good?

I have today. Precious Monday to do what I can only do today. I have this today, to consider carefully each trade I am offered and consent to nothing but trading up, nothing but grace, nothing but holiness, nothing but God’s best for my boys.