Installment II. Learning to be a Parent

At one point I offered to resign from the ministry, but wiser heads prevailed, and the leadership of the congregation paid for our family to receive professional counseling. Because ministers and their families face unusual challenges, we went to a counseling center at a seminary about three and a half hours away. This began with the whole family, all eight of us, including my mother. Then only two of our children and my wife and I went, and finally just our one child and with Sandy and me. I think that spending seven hours in a car one day a week for the better part of a year really made the hour and a half, weekly seasons very effective.

I learned a lot about myself and how I could actually be in the house and yet so detached that I may as well have been out at another one of those many night meetings that pastors have to do.

I learned about how frustrated my wife was, still recovering from a broken pelvis and brain injuries that left her with stroke like symptoms. Oftentimes, she had been the parent, and I had simply been the sleeping "junk yard dog" whose chain she sometimes jerked to get the support she needed to make our children "do right." It was during this time that my wife and I began the daily habit of taking the time to meet and pray together before beginning the day. It was a time of humbling and a measure of brokenness, especially for me.

During that time I came to realize the significance of the will of the individual in responding to the positive and negative conditioning of those in authority. I came to grips with the importance of affirming individual human dignity even to children. I realized that while positive and negative reinforcement works well with small children, as those children develop, parents need to step back and allow their children to learn from their own mistakes -- indeed, to allow them the freedom to make mistakes.

Download How to be me in my Family Tree for ideas on parenting, grand parenting and praying.