A Trip around the Sun by Mark Batterson

Author:Mark Batterson [Batterson, Mark and Richard Foth, with Susanna Foth Aughtmon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL012120, REL012070
ISBN: 9781441228024
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2015-03-24T04:00:00+00:00

Mark’s Story

When you are playing marbles as a kid, you can either play for funsies or you can play for keeps. When your kids are little, parenting is like playing for funsies because young children are very forgetful, very forgiving. They won’t even remember the mistakes you made! I honestly believe that God intentionally created us in such a way that we don’t remember the first few years of life. That is one of His greatest acts of grace, because who would want to remember having their diaper changed! By the way, the word diaper spelled backwards is repaid. Just saying.

Once your kids get older, parenting is like playing for keeps. The stakes get higher. You realize that your words can carry the weight of the world. Now, just to take a little pressure off, let me share something Lora shared with me on one of our Monday coffee dates. She said, “You think our kids will follow Jesus because of us. I think they’ll follow Jesus in spite of us.” Once again, I think Lora is right. That one revelation took so much pressure off of me. At the same time, I believe that the way we love our kids can help shape their identity. Who they become is a reflection of the time and energy you’ve poured into them. As they round the corner on the teenage years, you start counting down the number of years they have under your roof. You realize that your time together is precious. It’s our job to make every moment count.

My friend Reggie Joiner actually encourages parents to buy a large glass jar and fill it with 936 marbles. That’s 1 marble times 52 weeks times 18 years. It’s a countdown clock of sorts. Each week, parents remove one marble as a reminder that they are playing for keeps (which, by the way, is the title of the book he’s written on the subject). It’s a healthy reminder of the old adage: the days are long but the years are short.

Lora and I had been married three years when our first child, Parker, was born. We got married young and started our family young. That meant we had way more energy, but the tradeoff was that we didn’t have much wisdom. I can’t recount the number of times I had a crisis counseling session with Foth on the subject of marriage or parenting. He reminded me more than once of a simple biblical truth: this too shall pass. Sometimes the most spiritual thing you can do is just hang in there. Then hang in there a little longer! For the record, one of the tricks of the trade that I picked up from Foth is that he never asks me how I’m doing first. He always says, “How are Lora and the kids?” He knows that how they’re doing will give him a good gauge on how I’m doing!

We really didn’t have any idea what we were doing as parents, but we decided to have a few more kids to have more fun.

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