Many Hands, One Garden

I was having a conversation with a young friend recently about raising children. And when I say young, I mean young. I am pushing seventy, and she hasn’t quite managed to leave her teenage years behind yet.

She is a sweet young woman who has come through some difficult things in her short life. What impresses me most about her, though, isn’t what she has survived. It is what she is doing with the life in front of her. She is making wiser choices, building something better, and not merely striving these days, but thriving.

So when she sat me down and announced that she wanted me to tell her everything I knew about raising children—all my advice, all my ideas, what works and what doesn’t—I did what any woman pushing seventy who has already raised children would naturally do.

I laughed.

Not a polite little chuckle, either.

Some twenty minutes later, after I had gathered my wits and what remained of my composure, I realized she was serious.

The funny thing is, forty years ago I probably would have had considerably more answers for her. Raising children has a remarkable way of curing you of the belief that you know how to raise children.

So I told her something she probably wasn’t expecting.

People are going to give you advice. Lots of it. Someone will tell you this way is wrong and that way is right. Someone else will tell you exactly the opposite. There will be books and theories and well-meaning relatives and people whose children are not even born yet who somehow possess astonishing expertise on the subject.

Listen. Learn. Pray. Take wisdom wherever you find it.

But understand something else.

When the real moment comes—the exhausted moment, the frightened moment, the angry moment, or the moment when somebody has drawn on something that was definitely not supposed to be drawn on—you will often respond from what has already been formed inside you.

All of us do.

We enter adulthood carrying things we learned long before we realized we were learning them. We have watched how people handle anger, disappointment, affection, conflict, forgiveness, money, responsibility, faith, and failure. Some of what we were given is worth passing along. Some of it needs to stop with us. And sometimes we don’t discover which is which until life presses hard enough for it to come spilling out.

That is why Scripture says, “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life” (Proverbs 4:23).

Long before we can prepare for every situation we may face, we can allow God to prepare us. We can let Him work on the impatience, the temper, the fear, the pride, the tendency to withdraw or react before we listen. Romans 12:2 calls it being “transformed by the renewing of your mind.” God is able to change more than our behavior. He can change the patterns behind it.

And when we don’t get it right—and we won’t always get it right—we can do something else our children desperately need to see.

We can own it.

I told her there may come a day when she owes her own child an apology. Give it. Being the parent doesn’t make us incapable of being wrong, and saying, “I was wrong. I should not have spoken to you that way. Will you forgive me?” doesn’t diminish our authority. It teaches something about character that a lecture never could.

“Confess your faults one to another” (James 5:16).

Children need examples of patience and self-control, certainly. But they also need examples of repentance, humility, and what it looks like to make something right after getting it wrong. Sometimes the lesson isn’t in our perfect response. Sometimes it is in what we do after an imperfect one.

The second thing I told her was to choose her village carefully.

I don’t mean simply having people around. A crowd is not a village.

All of us begin life in a village we did not choose. Family, neighbors, friends, teachers, church members, coaches, and countless others become part of the landscape from which we learn what life looks like. Some leave us beautiful things to carry forward. Others teach us, sometimes painfully, what we do not want to repeat.

But adulthood gives us an opportunity we didn’t have as children. We can become more intentional about who has influence in our lives and, eventually, in the lives of our children.

I told her to surround herself with people she trusts and respects, people whose lives reflect the values she wants planted in her home. People who will love her children enough to laugh with them, listen to them, encourage them, correct them when necessary, and quietly reinforce the things she is trying to teach.

Scripture gives us a beautiful little glimpse of this in Timothy. Paul remembered “the unfeigned faith” that first dwelt in Timothy’s grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice (2 Timothy 1:5). Timothy’s faith eventually had to become his own, but before that happened, he had watched faith being lived around him.

That matters.

Children are shaped by far more than the instructions we deliberately give them. They listen to conversations from the back seat when we think they aren’t paying attention. They notice how adults treat waitresses, neighbors, strangers, and one another. They watch how people handle disappointment. They learn what friendship looks like, what marriage looks like, what forgiveness looks like, and what faith looks like when life hurts.

Little eyes gather evidence everywhere.

So choose some of that evidence on purpose.

Give your child an Auntie who isn’t technically an aunt but loves like one. Let there be an older man whose handshake means something because his word means something. Find people who show up for birthdays and ordinary Tuesdays, hard seasons and celebrations, disappointments and the occasional phone call that begins, “You are not going to believe what this child did.”

“He that walketh with wise men shall be wise” (Proverbs 13:20).

A good village doesn’t replace a parent. It surrounds a child with additional witnesses to the kind of life the parent is trying to build.

And there may come a day when your child needs to hear something you have already said fifty-seven times—but somehow, when a trusted person in the village says exactly the same thing, it suddenly becomes profound wisdom.

Try not to take it personally.

That is apparently one of the services villages provide.

If this Fireside Chat warmed your spirit and sparked fresh resolve to live what you believe, fan that flame with Scripture—“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly” (Colossians 3:16). Pull a little closer to the Light, and carry it into the week ahead.

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