By Chaplain Mike

On her•meneutics, Christianity Today’s blog for women, Elrena Evans has written a post called, “Why There’s No Narnia in Our Home.”

I’d like to hear your opinions on it today.

It turns out that Ms. Evans takes a very aggressive role in controlling the reading material to which her children are exposed. She was involved in a Ph.D. program in children’s literature when pregnant with her first child. This set her to organizing and purging her bookshelves, putting many volumes away in boxes until she felt her child would be ready to read them. As life went on, she testifies,

Things got complicated when my daughter started reading at a very early age. Like many parents of early readers, I found that books that were otherwise fine suddenly weren’t, when they were being read by a child much younger than their intended audience. I re-read the Little House on the Prairie series from her perspective and nearly had a heart attack. Narnia became a wasteland of bloodshed and violence. Even Christopher Robin was running around shooting things with his gun.

Go to her•meneutics, read and think through Ms. Evans’s perspective. Please. I want our Open Mic conversation to take place in response to what she says. I’m not really interested in any knee jerk reactions someone might have to the brief summary I have written here.

Then return and let’s have a discussion about parenting as followers of Jesus, guiding and protecting our children, and what may or may not be appropriate reading material in our homes.

By Chaplain Mike

As the young couple stood before the minister, dressed in wedding finery, room filled with well-wishers, a life stretched out before them, this is what he said to them.

“A reading from 1 Corinthians 13:
Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

“As you prepare to make your vows to each other, these words about love from the Bible can guide you in understanding the nature of what you are promising.

“On days like today, the idea of love can seem almost magical. You stand here, beautifully dressed, with your friends and family surrounding you. We are all incredibly happy for you, and we are glad to be here participating in this celebration. Everyone’s smiling. The atmosphere is positive and optimistic and hopeful. We live for moments like this.

“However, there can be a big difference between the moments we live for, and the moments we live in.

• The moments we live for are the extraordinary moments; we enjoy them periodically, and they provide special memories for us.
• On the other hand, the moments we live in most days involve the ordinary activities of our life, and they are not always exciting or memorable. It is easy to feel loving during the special moments, but it is not always easy to show and practice love during the daily grind of life.

“But those are exactly the times when we must practice the kind of love we read about here, when we must be patient and kind, when we must avoid being rude and irritable, and when we must not stubbornly insist on our own way. When we get tired and grumpy, when we don’t like what our spouse says and we feel anger rising within us, when life gets hard and the money gets short and the house is messy, that’s when genuine love is most needed.

“The Bible tells us that God is love, and this kind of love grows in our hearts when we trust in him. It is almost inconceivable that two people can promise to love each other like this for a lifetime without knowing all that they will have to face together. I guarantee you that it will be a thousand times harder than you think, and that you will fail many times, as we all have. It is in those times that you must love one another by practicing forgiveness.

“So, as you make your promises today, please realize that what you are vowing is impossible without God’s help and the support of your extended family and friends. And it will never happen if you don’t learn to forgive one another as Christ forgave you. Anyone can have a wedding. It takes years of practicing faith, hope, and love together to have a marriage and build a life and family together.”

Later, that evening, as the minister (who also happened to be the bride’s father) danced with his daughter to a song they had heard together through all her growing-up years, he was worried that she might be upset about the mishaps that had befallen them over the weekend, changing some of their plans and leading to tense moments. He whispered in her ear, “I’m sorry everything didn’t turn out perfect. I hope you aren’t too disappointed.”

She responded, “Oh dad, that’s OK. This is about marriage, not just about a wedding.”

And that is when he knew it would be alright.

The two most important determining factors in raising well-adjusted children are if they have religious training and if the family eats dinner together. -From the Touchstone Magazine website

The greatest compliment Denise and I receive is how well our children have turned out. Noel and Clay are amazing young adults and we have more grateful joy in them than we do in anything we’ve done or accomplished.

Often, we are asked to write down “how” we raised such great kids. I’m sure we both answer that request the same way: “God did it!” Whatever we (and others) did right, God gave the grace and providence that made our kids what they are. We continue to see the work of God in their lives, even as adults who are living their own lives and making their own choices. From DNA to sparing us particular kinds of problems to the kinds of people that surround us in our community to the on-going work of the Holy Spirit, the “God” part of parenting is far, far beyond any choices we made as parents.

I do believe, however, there are some reflections on parenting that would be worthwhile, and I will share some of them in this post and in future posts. I am encouraging Denise to also write some reflections at her blog.

The quote at the top of this post caught my attention because on a long drive yesterday, Denise and I mentioned this very thing as a key to the success of our family. The family dinner was a constant in our home throughout the parenting years.

Let me give some background. Both Denise and I grew up in families where the family dinner was an expected and normal part of life. No matter how much mental illness and conflict tore at the peace of our family, mom, dad and I would sit down, pray and eat together.

When we came to our current place of ministry, we began to do what many of our co-workers did: eat in the school cafeteria for all meals. Soon, however, we decided that we needed to establish a family meal at home where work and student concerns wouldn’t interrupt our meal. We also believed that our children deserved what we had as children: a regular family mealtime.

So we began a nightly ritual of calibrating our schedules and work responsibilities so that we could bring food home from the cafeteria (or cook, or both) and have a set, regular meal with our children. This wasn’t easy. At times it was a tremendous hassle, but we did this throughout our lives here and Denise and I continue to do so now (though we go to the cafeteria a bit more often when we have evening work to do.)

I don’t want to be “pollyanna” about what was involved in this kind of commitment. Often the food was not appealing and we had to compensate. Clay passed on a lot of meals and ate PB and J instead of what was served. Sometimes the kids had rehearsals to attend. We often adjusted meal times to accommodate schedules. We weren’t always in a good mood and we didn’t always want to be together.

Not every meal was a happy time, just as not every day is a happy day. During times Denise and I were having marriage issues, some of these meals were very difficult. I have confessed some of my personal sins to my kids at mealtimes, and that was tearful. But my overwhelming memory of these times is one of happiness and enjoyment of one another. I have no doubt this made a large contribution to the health of our home.

The largest portion of these family meals was the best part of the day. I think we would all agree that not only was this important to the parenting process, but it defined our family and our relationships to one another in many ways. In my mind, I remember this as a special, much blessed time.

How did the family meal make for successful parenting?

We learned to talk to one another. Conversation is a hallmark of the Spencer family. We talk and we enjoy talking as a family. Sometimes the kids would fight over who was interrupting whom in a conversation. Considering where a lot of people are with their kids- cold silence- this was a good problem to have.

We asked all those questions that parents ask. Our kids didn’t like it any more than your kids do, but they learned to expect questions about the day, grades, experiences, and school. We call it “getting a full report.”

We passed along the stories, rumors, surprises and events of the day. It was a way to “process” what happens in life, and to share it with others. It was also a time to gain perspective, and to learn from the lessons of the day.

We celebrated, and we encouraged each other. The kids often struggled. Mom and Dad struggled, too. But we were a team. The family meal was an expression that we were there “for” one another.

We discussed events that contained lessons about morals and values. This might seem gossipy, but we discussed what other families were doing that we weren’t going to do. (Like spending money on a luxury, for example.) We discussed problems we were having with students or that other families were having with their kids. This gave us “case studies” to discuss what we believed about morals, ethics, life and faith. These “case studies” were effective in communicating and growing in maturity and faith.

The kids asked questions; sometimes life questions, faith questions and even Bible questions. Clay had a Bible teacher that he didn’t agree with very often, so we spent a lot of time talking about what that teacher meant when she said something wasn’t “of God.” Like Harry Potter. Or Magic Cards. Or most of the movies we watched.

We laughed. We laughed a lot. Laughter and humor are gifts and our family relishes them. Our work in our ministry setting is hard, so we have to laugh. We learned to laugh at our own mistakes after we’d been angry or pathetic about the same mistake. We laughed at the stories and follies of our life at a boarding school. Believe me, there were lots of things to laugh about. God has blessed us all with senses of humor, and we exercise them frequently and in ways we couldn’t at school, church or with other families. This gave our family a bond, because we always knew the family would share our skewered perspective on events of the day, and help us find the humor in them.

This thirty minutes every evening was a time to pray, talk, share, question, complain, listen, question and interact. It was the “family conversation,” and we miss it very, very much. The empty table is the worst part of the empty nest.

As the kids got older, this family dinner became more important to the kids, and today we all realize that eating, talking and laughing together are God’s wonderful gifts to us. We’ve now included Ryan, our son-in-law, at our table. He’s a quiet fellow, but he’s become part of the chaos and the fellowship that is the Spencer family meal time.

Because we started when our children were very, very young, we didn’t have to force our kids to to this against their will or over another routine. Because our community is tiny, we had very few issues of scheduling we couldn’t work out to all be together. We were blessed, and blessed in the process.

Eating at a table with family is a preview of heavenly fellowship with Christ and one another. I hope that image is rooted, for our kids and for us, in the real experience of the family dinner table.