Part 10 (1/2)

Jesus himself faced such a night. After three years of impeccable living, impactful ministry and the forging of a legacy that would inspire believers for thousands of years to come, he found himself sitting in a garden, his soul overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.7 In just a few hours, he would face torture and crucifixion. The agonizing prospect of this reality caused him to sweat drops of blood. He prayed, ”My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.”8 The text tells us he made this request of G.o.d not once, not twice, but three times in full. And yet still Christ had to die.

A seldom-noted moment in this garden scene captures my attention. Between the prayerful sweating of blood and his arrest by a mob of soldiers, Jesus seemed to have experienced a moment when he was emboldened to lay his dark-night burden down and then, simply, to ”get up.”

”Rise! Let us go!”9 he told his disciples, who had been snoozing while Jesus fervently prayed. ”If ever there has been a dark night, this is it!” I envision him saying. ”But trust me when I tell you, great light soon will s.h.i.+ne again.”

That Light can come into your life too. The G.o.d who is near to you-the G.o.d who actively seeks you out-this G.o.d whispers light into your darkest night.

CHAPTER 7.

PROMPTINGS.

FOR PARENTHOOD.

ONE FRIDAY EVENING I HAD SOLE RESPONSIBILITY FOR MY then two-year-old grandson, Henry. Everyone else in the family had made plans to go to a party, so for six hours it was just the kid and me. I dutifully did the diaper drill and the air-plane-in-the-hanger trick to get him to eat his dinner, and then I decided I'd take him for a walk. It was eight-thirty or so, which technically meant I should have been putting him to bed. But his parents were nowhere to be found, so I figured we could break some rules.

A few minutes into our stroll, a delivery truck slowly drove by, and on the side of the truck was a picture of a giant ice cream cone. Picking up his stride a little, Henry said, ”Ice cream! Ice cream! I need ice cream.” I figured now was as good a time as any for him to learn the difference between needs and wants, and so bending down to his level I stopped his forward progress.

”Henry,” I said, ”you don't actually need ice cream, because to 'need' something means you have to have it in order to survive, like air. You don't have to have ice cream to survive. You may want ice cream, which is okay. But you don't need it.”

He tilted his face to the side and looked up at me. Two perplexed blue eyes, positioned above his very fat cheeks, seemed to say, ”Look, I know you're trying to have a teachable moment here and everything, but I need ice cream. I saw a truck, there was ice cream on the side of that truck and now I need to have that ice cream. That's as complicated as I get.”

While he and I were engaged in our exchange, the truck eased away from the stop sign and soon was out of sight.

”See?” I said with the certain satisfaction that comes from beating a two-year-old in a debate. ”You're not going to get ice cream after all. And for the record, you never needed it to begin with.”

We turned back toward the house because it was starting to get cold outside. As we rounded the bend-to Henry's delight-the truck reappeared.

”Ice cream!” Henry cheered. ”I need ice cream!”

”You don't need ice cream,” I said, fully aware that my words were having no effect. As I continued herding him toward home, the truck pulled right up next to us and stopped. Two men hopped out and came over to ask me how to get to a particular address, where they were due to make a frozen-food delivery. After I provided the requested information, one of the guys nodded toward Henry.

”Hey, is that your kid?” he asked.

”Try grandkid,” I said, ”and he's been giving me grief about ice cream ever since he noticed the side of your truck. He keeps telling me he needs ice cream, and I keep explaining that while he might want ice cream, he does not need it.”

I don't know why I told the guy all of this. Maybe I was looking for a little validation, but that's not at all what I got.

”Hey!” the guy said, eyes dancing. ”I bet I got a spare cone in the back. Hang on.” With that, he disappeared into the truck . Moments later the man reappeared. He gallantly presented an ice cream cone to Henry, who shot me a look that had his clear sentiment written all over it: ”I told you I needed ice cream.”

So much for my big grand-parenting moment-which wasn't so grand in the end.

HOURS LATER, AFTER I'D FINALLY PULLED HENRY DOWN FROM his sugar high, coerced him into pajamas and helped him say his bedtime prayers, I headed toward the living room. I picked up a few scattered toys and lay down on the couch to recuperate for a few minutes. As I lay there, I replayed the night and decided that all in all, I really was a fantastic grandfather. Henry had made it through multiple hours with no adult supervision other than me, and there were no broken bones, b.l.o.o.d.y noses or major melt-downs to report. In fact, in my honest and objective opinion, I had done a banner job of taking care of the little guy.

Partway through my lavish self-praise, I sensed the Holy Spirit saying, ”Give it a rest, Bill. You did alright, but you had a pretty good head start, if you'll recall.”

As I lay there considering the Holy Spirit's interruption-which although true seemed a bit discourteous to me-a flood of memories came to mind, most of which I know only by way of tattered black-and-white photographs and Hybels' family folklore. G.o.d was right: I had been given a good head start, courtesy of some Christ-following relatives who had gone before me.

A hundred years ago a man named John Hybels had married a woman named Mary, and together they moved from the Netherlands to Kalamazoo, Michigan. They loved G.o.d with all their heart, soul, mind and strength, they were diligent to hear and heed the whispers of G.o.d, and they raised a houseful of children, one of whom was Harold Hybels, who would grow up and marry Jerry, my mother. That couple too would live for G.o.d and love him with all their heart, soul, mind and strength, and they would wind up having five kids, one of whom is me. I would grow up and marry Lynne, and although we would do an imperfect job of parenting, we would set out with all our heart, soul, mind and strength to hear and heed the input of G.o.d and to love our family with every ounce of devotion we possessed.

By G.o.d's grace and heaven's humor, our two kids would grow up and choose to love G.o.d as well, and our daughter would marry a man who also had been raised by parents who followed Christ with their lives, and who was now choosing to live his life in that same vein. Their union has yielded a little boy, a kid named Henry, who all of us hope will devote his life to G.o.d in exactly the same way.

On the couch that evening, in the silence of my living room, I felt an immense wave of grat.i.tude rush over me.

”Thank you, G.o.d, for putting me in a family that has generations of faithfulness on its side. Thank you for giving me a spiritual head start, for giving my kids a head start and for giving Henry a head start too.” I'll never deserve G.o.d's goodness in my life, but I'm grateful for it all the same.

Every serious-minded parent I know wants to pa.s.s along good things, not bad things, to their kids. They want to leave a legacy of blessing and wisdom rather than foolishness and pain. They want to be known as ones who followed G.o.d's sound instruction rather than going their own way with their lives.

Deuteronomy 6:6a7 says, ”Always remember these commands I give you today. Teach them to your children, and talk about them when you sit at home and walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up” (NCV). Parents who mean business know that spiritual values can't be imparted to kids by words alone. The values lived out through the course of their real-world everyday lives are the ones that will stick. Spiritual dogma doled out in a rigid, militaristic fas.h.i.+on-intended to control, rather than to transform a child's heart-will bear the fruit of some serious resentment and rebellion. Instead, as the verses in Deuteronomy suggest, wise parents adopt the life-lesson approach to helping their kids establish a spiritual foundation upon which to build their lives.

However, it is my contention that even if someone could write the perfect parenting book-and even if every parent on the planet read it and applied its lessons fastidiously-there would still be a few (hundred) times in life when moms and dads would be at a total loss regarding how to coach and counsel their kids.

Even Scripture leaves much to be desired when it comes to turn-by-turn directions for steering our kids toward independence and maturity. G.o.d intentionally left out a lot of detail when it comes to solving parenting (and grand-parenting!) dilemmas, which I happen to think is a good thing. When we get in over our heads, when we step beyond our capability, beyond even what Scripture has to say, it brings us to our knees. We get desperate enough to ask G.o.d personally to intervene. And then it becomes our job to stay wide open to what he wants to communicate to us. It is whisper time!

One of the earliest, most significant parenting whispers I remember receiving from G.o.d pertained to our son, Todd. It was apparent to me from their earliest ages that our kids, Shauna and Todd, were as different as night and day. Shauna was wired two-twenty from day one. She has always been incredibly verbal, highly extroverted and the life of every party. At age three, she could carry on adult-level conversations and loved to talk so much that Lynne and I kidded her by saying, ”Honey, you've never had a single unexpressed thought, feeling or opinion.”

With Shauna, you always knew where she stood. She had a personality type that really resonated with my own. Conversationally, we were like two peas in a pod: I was expressive and candid with her, and she was a verbal light bulb in response.

But Todd was not wired that way.

When he was still quite young, I recognized that I never was going to reach deeply into Todd's soul through the use of words. It was a realization that came to me around our family's dinner table one night. As was typically the case, Lynne, Shauna and I were carrying the conversation, and I noticed that as our banter increased, Todd's involvement decreased. The more we engaged, the more he withdrew, and suddenly the Holy Spirit whispered. ”Bill, if you do not adopt a different approach with this little guy, you might just lose him forever.”

The prompting was quite upsetting to me. What adjustments could I make as his dad to connect with his personality, so different from my own? During the weeks that followed, I read as many parenting books as I could find, in hopes of discovering the secret to engaging a quieter kid, and thankfully, one author came to my aid.

He suggested that because children are distinct, parents would do well to offer differing parenting styles to each. Now this may sound like Parenting 101 to many, but it was a mind-blower to me. I was raised in a cultural setting where parents employed one parenting style, even though they were raising five or six children with vastly different wiring patterns, preferences and needs. But something rang true in this author's counsel. With G.o.d's whisper still punctuating my thoughts, I thought I would give it a try.

Through another read, I discovered the concept of ”love languages,”1 ways in which people receive love from others. I learned that Todd's ”love language” was quality time. More than words of affirmation or attempts at deep father/son talks, what Todd needed most from me was unrushed time, and time on his terms. So, I decided that if I couldn't reach him through dinnertime conversations-which worked wonderfully with Shauna-I'd offer him my time. This took intentionality, and it looked differently at different ages as Todd grew. During his elementary school years, I would come home after a long day at work and say, ”Hey, Todd, what would you like to do for the next couple of hours, just you and me?”

His answer always revolved around one of three things: he wanted to go look at used cars, head to the bicycle shop and look at bike gear, or take a trip to the nearest motorcycle dealers.h.i.+p and meander up and down the rows of Harleys, just soaking it all in.

Thankfully, my son and I had some shared interests in each of those areas. But spending multiple hours in these shops two or three times a week-not to talk, mind you, but simply to roam around-wasn't exactly my definition of ”connecting.” After making several of these significant investments of time, I thought, ”Surely this will open the kid up, and soon he will feel the freedom to talk more.”

But no dice. Todd was still quiet. Actually, about every six weeks when we were en route back home from one dealers.h.i.+p or another, he would open up a tiny bit and offer something for us to talk about for a few minutes. But I learned that Todd never was going to verbalize his feelings on par with his sister, and the sooner I right-sized my expectations and watched for optimal opportunities that would offer him a chance to talk, the more of his heart he was likely to disclose.

TODD IS IN HIS EARLY THIRTIES NOW, AND HE HAS REMAINED true to his quieter, G.o.d-given wiring. As I look back at that first critical whisper from G.o.d, it is painfully clear that, had I stayed on the other track-the track of forcing my single-focused parenting style on two very different children-I'd have severely limited my relations.h.i.+p with him.

As it has turned out, we enjoy a wonderfully fulfilling connection these days, mostly because along the way we learned how to use fewer words by using them well. These days, you'd rarely catch us sitting across from each other at a restaurant, engaged in a multi-hour conversation. But you might find us jogging together or boating together or working on one of Todd's jet skis together and, after a substantial amount of quiet, quality time has pa.s.sed, exchanging a few well-placed, meaningful sentences. I praise G.o.d for every single one.

My kids' wiring differences went deeper than just their communication patterns. The entirety of their interpersonal worlds varied as vastly as two people's could.

Shauna has always loved people and parties, and she is not averse to speaking to crowds, large or small. Todd, on the other hand, preferred a behind-the-scenes style of life. This was another area where G.o.d by his promptings saved me from a terrible series of parenting mistakes.

Todd played team sports all through grade school-soccer and basketball, mostly. When he was in junior high, he was a starter on his school's basketball team and one of their highest scorers. Once when he was in the throes of try-outs for the eighth-grade team, which he was a shoe-in to make, he caught me totally off-guard. He was just about to head off to bed one night but stopped and said, ”Dad, I don't think I want to play basketball anymore.”