Parenting

Joyce Maier
Prince Albert, SK
August 2, 2007
This morning on Day 9 "TRUE FATHERS" devotional, I was taken back about 10 years. It was a summer when tent caterpillars had invaded the northern prairies. They literally turned our forests into areas of devastation as you could hear them chewing in great numbers the leaves off of our poplar and birch trees. The natural beauty was lost as the trees stood leaf-less the remainder of the summer. Places we used to love to picnic at were now constant reminders of the tent caterpillars ravenous appetite and his destructive ways. I was reminded this morning how we lost a whole season of beauty and in the prairies that is quite traumatic. Wait we did though for the next spring only to find that they came back with an even greater vengeance, as the highway on route to one of the lakes becoming wet and black with the remains of crossing caterpillars.

We have also lost seasons when the fathers and sons have failed to walked together. It also has left its mark on the highway of life for many young men. But God's promises are sure when He says He will restore the years that the locust have eaten. The locusts chewed away the young impressionable years revealing busy preoccupied years of striving by parents to attain at the expense of lives-our sons.

But now the fathers and mothers are longing- longing to walk in oneness with their sons and sons are longing to be understood and walk with dad. But somehow the "how to" seems difficult and painful as they look at each other and LONG for what is not. But God is a restorer and loves to redeem the very things we think are lost. We watch as in many ways our sons are passing us by spiritually and we wonder is all this of God. Our hearts cry out to our Dear Heavenly Father who sees our hearts hears our cries and gently says hold their hand- love them - release them for such a time as this.