When we bring our children before the magnificent, mysterious world God has made, when we allow them to answer their own questions with more questions, it sparks something sacred in their heart.

As my ideas dissolved into reality, I took it personally. What was poked holes in all of my assumptions of what should be. I was failing. Until I rephrased my question.

  “Just a minute,” I responded flatly. In the peripheral of my focus he slipped back outside. I wonder now if he believed me. I don’t know what they made that day. I don’t know what he wanted to show me. That “just a minute” never took place. It was lost among empty promises punctuating […]

Those conversations were my gray area. Three-minute-long dialogues in the car or grocery checkout line. So much of parenting is found in these truncated discussions between cereal aisles and bedtime prayers.

Panic rose like a torrent in my chest. My three-year-old son was nowhere in sight. My eyes shot wildly back and forth. Do I go search the playground, or run straight to the river?

We begin our goal setting practice by first looking back. I look forward to this list writing every December. That is why I cringed when he brought up a new idea for this year.