Pillars in Place
My son is getting married and the Wisconsin bridal shower for my future daughter-in-law is going on right now. Since the rain was coming down hard when my wife was to start out on the two hour drive to the “shower” this morning, I volunteered to drive her. So here I am, sitting at a McDonald’s in the town where we raised our kids, a McDonald’s where Junior played many times in the kids crawling gym as a little boy, waiting for my wife to finish. Back when the kids were little and rushing through their happy meals to get into the sea of plastic balls, we knew this day was coming (older people kept telling us it was), we just didn’t know how soon it would be here. I’m really grateful for how it appears our kids are turning out. I sure hope and pray we gave them a strong foundation for life.
An hour ago, since I was in town anyway, I drove to the church building of the congregation Linda and I established a little over twenty years ago. It feels good to drive by the building and know that all that work paid off….that there is still a strong and growing congregation here.
As I pulled out of the parking lot, I looked back and for some reason, the pillars holding up the carport caught my eye. I remember putting them in. I did it almost by myself. The white pillars that are visible are just aluminum wraps around steel posts. I remember wrapping them. And I remember holding the steel posts in place with a plumb level on the side while the welder attached them to the beam above and the steel plate below that emerged from the concrete footing. I also remember pouring the concrete footing. The footing actually extends nine feet below fill dirt to 4 foot square slabs I had poured on the undisturbed ground two weeks before. To extend the foundation the additional nine feet to reach ground level where the steel posts could be attached, I used twelve inch circular forms I found at Menard’s. One of our members brought out a small concrete mixer to the site and I even mixed the concrete before filling the forms that would hold up the steel posts that held up the carport. So from the slab at the bottom to the carport itself, I did just about everything. When it was all finished, I even shingled the roof on top. It was pretty cool to look back and see all four pillars still standing firm, no sag, and the roof held up strong and level.
But it all went down to the four foundation slabs beneath those pillars. Thinking about my kids, I wondered, what were the important foundation slabs we hopefully undergirded the lives of our children. And four immediately came to mind.
1) Unconditional love. I know all parents say they love their children. Who would ever say anything other? But the proof in the pudding is in the eating. Real love is demonstrated by affection, words of affirmation, sacrificial care, and from a child’s perspective, time.
2) Consistent discipline. I don’t believe this is taught nearly enough to young parents today. We have the failed results of some schools of thought in modern psychology to thank for that. But children cannot learn from those they do not accept as their authority. We believed that teaching our children that we were the parents and they were the kids very early would determine whether or not they would learn anything else from us.
3) Consistent lifestyle. Kids learn more about the way we live than the things we tell them. It was important to Linda and I that we be the same people all the time, at home, at church, alone, or with our friends. Kids see through phoniness quicker than anyone.
4) Constant teaching. We believed it was important to tell our kids on a daily basis why we lived the way we lived, why we valued the things and principles we valued, and how they could live in such a way that God would be honored.
These four principles are absolutely necessary for parents to effectively pass their values on to their children….what we call effective parenting. I hope they stand as firm in our kids lives as the four pillars in front of my former church.