A Bouncing Baby Lesson

Yesterday, I took my boys to the park.  It was a nice cool morning and Ian and Gavyn played on the playground.  Sean isn’t really that focussed on the playground.  He likes to swing and slide a bit but he’s still pretty much too small to use a lot of the stuff there.  He does however love to run.  He will run fast and far, straight and in circles.  Yesterday, as I was following the bouncing blond head around the park,  I was struck by something.  He will run for a bit, he will stop and look at something that catches his eye, stand back up, and keep running.  One thing he doesn’t seem to do is to look back.  He runs forward, always seemingly in search of a new thing to discover, to explore, to eat.  I thought about the older boys and how they have started to look back a bit, but still for the most part are focussed on what’s ahead.  They don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what has already happened in their lives, they just think about what is yet to come.  I thought about my life and my tendency to live in the past.....and I wondered, where did that change happen?  When did I shift from thinking only ahead, to looking mostly back?  I think that it’s healthy to look forward and look for new and exciting adventures, but I also think there are lessons to learn from reflecting on the past too.  As with many things, it’s a pendulum effect.  The sweet spot is somewhere in the middle but it seems that it’s hard to stop the pendulum from swinging when you are in the sweet spot, mostly because it’s hard to know you are in it at the time.    The bittersweet thing about this as a dad is that so many of the lessons from the past, are from a place of pain and the last place I want to imagine my kids learning from is a place of pain.  I often wish they would just listen to me and then they wouldn’t have to experience the pain.  I use that line when I’m reasoning with them.  If they just listen and follow my directions, they won’t have to be yelled at, or they wouldn’t get hurt, or things would get done more quickly, etc.....  This isn’t usually effective.  They have to experience it for themselves, and in fact, since they are my son’s, usually have to experience it several times before they figure it out.  I have to be honest and say that it doesn’t really help my frame of mind that much to realize that I do the same thing with Christ.  He calmly and reasonably lays out advice, instructions, and counsel that is designed to show me how to live and if I just listen and follow that instruction, I will experience a lot less pain.  I am pretty bad at listening to that counsel though. I have to experience it for myself, many times, over and over again, just like my sons.  It’s amazing what a morning at the park watching a baby run can teach you and I’m thankful that God talks to me in more than one way.  Now if I could just perfect that listening and applying part.