I was fixing oatmeal for breakfast, and she was sitting looking through the Dr. Seuss classic, which Tom had read to the kids last night.
"Hmmm, well what do you think?" I genuinely wanted to hear her thoughts, rather than give her "the answer".
"I think it's about growing up." she ventured, with a bit of a question in her voice. We both smiled, and I told her I thought she was right.
It squeezes my heart a bit to think of where life will take these children of mine. We tease that they'll live just across the street, maybe around the corner. Silas says he's never leaving.
Our culture says they have to go. Often faraway. Go find a job that pays well, go out and try to save the world. I'm thinking long and hard about all this. So many traditional cultures and peoples emphasize family, emphasize taking care of one another. God created families: to be our community, to teach us to love and serve. But here we live in a time and place that stresses the primary importance of individual calling, individual purpose, self-fulfillment.
I want to tell my kids they can go anywhere, they can be anything, they can follow their dreams. But I also want to tell them that they don't have to go far. That God can use them anywhere. That bigger doesn't always mean better. And honestly, I'm still trying to figure all this out for myself.
