Ecclesiastes 3:1-2 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven… a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted.
I love the old Chinese proverb that says – “The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The next best time is now.”
My wife and I went to watch Like Arrows (a Family Life movie about parenting in theaters last week only) on our date night this past week, and we left encouraged, challenged, and touched with the reminder that as parents – “it’s all worth it.”
Making the investments into our children’s lives now is worth the lifetime of returns later. Because the things we “give up” are not actually the giving up of anything if we look at it in proper perspective. We are simply making the most important investments in the most important places at the most important time of our children’s lives.
One thing that really hit home with me was the fact that you can’t regain lost time. From day one, Every. Day. Matters.
Our children are establishing roots that are powerful from start to finish on our parenting journey. And the more we can help nurture and direct those roots, the better, because those roots will direct and even define them for the rest of their lives.
One of the great concerns in our culture today is that parents are wasting the valuable and precious years of their children’s lives on things that are neither valuable nor precious. And an even greater fear is that they will realize it too late. Their children are establishing roots, deep roots, and many don’t even recognize it. And because roots are rarely seen, they are often ignored. Yet with time, every tree (and every life) will be tested, and will only be as strong as it’s roots.
And yet, I was also encouraged through the movie that despite our successes or our failures as a parent (because we all have them), we will never mess up beyond the grace of God. Although every parent will one day wish they’d have done some things differently in the past, God’s redeeming grace is always still at work in the future.
In our family, we are just a couple years away from our oldest moving out of the house and going off to college. And sometimes we wonder… Have we done enough? What should we have done differently or better? Have we established the right roots?
While not a single one of us as parents can change a single thing that’s happened in the past, we still have TODAY. Let me encourage you that no matter where you are in your parenting journey, make the most of today, because you will never get it back.
Kids are like trees. Parenting is a process. Roots go deep. And we don’t get a second chance.
Psalm 127:4 As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth.
