The Powerful Potential of Parenthood!

It costs to be a parent these days. In 2017 the USDA issued Expenditures on Children (also known as “The Cost of Raising a Child”). In 2017, it was estimated a family spent approximately $12, 980 annually per child in a middle-income, two child, married couple family. Parents of a child born in 2017 were thus expected to spend $233,610 to raise the child through age 18. Whether accurate or not, parenthood is an expensive enterprise. A parent said, “We have an 18-year-old daughter. Her name is Alexis. We chose that name because if we hadn’t had her we’d be driving one.” These days they might have named her Tesla! Parenthood comes with other costs besides financial ones. They include huge investments of time, energy, emotion, anxiety, patience and compassion. Real parents have what the Bible calls “natural affection” (KJV Romans 1:31 * 2 Timothy 3:3). That affection elevates the price you pay for being a parent. It always costs to love and care, and the total investment for your child, in personal terms, cannot be measured except to say it is enormous, even staggering, and never-ending. Elizabeth Stone said it well: “The decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” In short, the price you pay for being a parent is to turn over your heart to your child / children (and in many instances grandchildren). You shouldn’t live your life just for your children, but your own happiness and wholeness and well-being, to a great extent, will forever be tied to theirs. As Jacob’s son Judah said about his aged father’s love for his youngest son (Benjamin): “his life is bound up in the life of the lad’s” (Genesis 44:30).  King Solomon noted the power of a child to bring happiness or grief to his parents in Proverbs 10:1 — “A wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish son is the grief of his mother.” Loving parents may have to give a child up, but they can never let go. God Himself said about His wayward, backsliding children (Israel) — “How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? ... My heart churns within Me; My sympathy is stirred” (Hosea 11:8). Bible students know God did at last give Israel up to the judgment of captivity. But it broke His heart to do so. Parenthood is costly.                           

 But there is also potential for great power in parenthood! Parents stand in a God-assigned place as His partners — not equal ones, mind you, but vital, incomparable ones! A place no one else can completely fill in the child’s life — not the state, not the school, not the day-care center, not even the church! Two familiar Bible verses remind us parenthood is oozing with potential and power for good: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6), and “You fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). There’s the potential power of parenthood! Parents co-partner with God in the awesome and fearful process of not only bringing a brand-new life into the world, but also nurturing and training and guiding her / him to mental, physical, social, and spiritual well-being and maturity. And most of all, guiding it toward Heaven. Paul Faulkner wrote, “When we bring a child into the world, we start a soul toward eternity ... a soul that will never die. A soul that will spend eternity in either Heaven or hell” (What Every Family Needs, p 129). Thank God for moms and dads who not only pay the price but consciously, consistently, and passionately wield the power of true parenthood! 

  Dan Gulley, Smithville TN