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We Are Becoming My Parents
by Norman and Ann Bales
All About Families


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Our oldest son called us recently. He was describing a day in the life of his family. Our son and daughter-in-law have two children - ages 15 and 12. A few days ago, the family spent an entire day participating in activities with their friends. Before the day was over they had stopped by several different homes and shared important events in the lives of several different people. Our son reflected on the day and said, "We are becoming my parents."

We really hadn't thought much about it until he said that, but the truth is that we often loaded our four children into the car and drove them over two or three counties to visit people who were important to us. We took the kids because we enjoyed significant relationships. We thought those times bonded our families together and we hoped it would contribute to the richness of growing up.

They weren't always enthusiastic about those trips. That's why our son suddenly realized he was repeating a pattern he had seen in his own home. Young people usually have other things on their agenda - playing with their friends, chatting on the telephone, going to a movie with friends, etc. When they are as old as our grandchildren, they usually aren't all that excited about getting in the car and traveling several miles to visit their parents' friends, especially if they are forced to listen to a lot of "grown-up" talk. Isn't it strange how things turn out though? A generation later, they're repeating the same pattern.

There's an old saying, "Like father, like son; like mother, like daughter." It's kind of nice to hear your son say, "We're becoming my parents" when he's describing relationship building activities. We didn't realize we were planting some kind of seed that would later show up in their own priorities.

Unfortunately, the same process works negatively as well as positively. When you read the stories of the Old Testament kings sometimes, the text says, "He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, just as his father (insert the name of the previous king) had done." But more frequently the text will say, "He did evil in the eyes of the Lord as his father had done."

Example is so powerful that it bridges multiple generations. Norman remembers the influence of his great grandfather, who died in 1942. He started his great-grandson on a Scripture memory program before he ever started school. His nickname for Norman was "Little Preacher." Did that influence Norman's faith and his later decision to become a full time minister? Probably so. Our grandchildren are five generations down the line from Grandpa Mackey, but faith is still alive. Each succeeding generation has made some contribution and that's just on one side of the family. If you traced the faith influences on the other side of our grandchildren's family, you would find an equal number of important influences. Family example makes an enormous difference.

But when the family members do not honor the Lord, the chain of influence is broken. It takes only one generation of unfaithfulness to break the chain and often children over the next several generations fail to develop faith commitments.

We possess an enormous capacity to influence generations to come. Here's the scary part. We will pass along our influence either positively or negatively. You have to decide which one you want it to be.

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