Raising children is tough.  You don't know what you are doing.  You are really just winging it most of the time, learning as you go.  Using the Bible as your guide--but it doesn't cover the fine points!!

One day, after Scott, Becky and Pat were grown and gone, Jonathan told me he wanted to talk to me.  Jon doesn't talk much, so my ears perked up.  We went into the living room, sat down, and I started getting nervous.  "Mom," he said, "I want to tell you something.  But you can't say anything.  You have to just sit there and listen.  I'm going to do something you won't approve of, and I don't want to do it behind your back."

"I don't know if I can do that!!," I said  All sorts of things had popped into my mind.

"Okay," he said--and he got up and left the room.  "Wait," I yelled.  Wait."  And he said, "Promise?"  So I promised that I would just listen.  That I wouldn't say anything. (Better than not knowing.)

"I am president of my Senior Class," he said.   "And tonight my friends--about fifteen of them--are going to climb the water tower with me and paint it.  I'm going up first.  We are probably going to get caught.  I didn't want the police to call you without you knowing in advance what was going on."

The police called.  But since one of the boys was the son of one of the policemen, they all got off with just a warning.  I guess since I knew beforehand what they were going to do, that I was an accessory to their crime. But the Bible doesn't cover water towers.  A promise is a promise.  I kept my mouth shut.  It is pretty neat to have a kid that doesn't want to go behind your back and do something he knows you won't approve of.  Sometimes, even when they are wrong, their hearts are right.

Psalms 127:3-5 "…children are an heritage of the Lord…as arrows are in the hand of a mighty man…happy is the man that has his quiver full of them…"  I've got four.