What Will They Remember?

Sometimes my childhood seems a distant memory, fading like an old photograph.

But I remember work—doing chores on the farm. Feeding hogs, baling hay, mowing grass, gathering eggs.

And I remember fun. Playing basketball in the barn, softball in the yard on hot summer evenings, and Monopoly at the kitchen table while the snow flew outside.

I remember listening. When my brothers and I went to bed in the upstairs of our old farmhouse, we could hear the low rumble of our parents' voices (punctuated by occasional laughter) as they talked downstairs. There was something peaceful about that sound.

I remember problems. For some reason my brother Jim became very angry when he learned I had sold his bicycle to a neighbor for $5.00. (It seemed like a good deal to me at the time.) I also remember the sad day when lightning struck an apple tree and killed some of the cattle that had huddled under it, including calves Jim had been preparing for the county fair.

I remember going to church. We went as a family every Sunday, and my parents expected me to dress up. (When I was 14, that meant a mohair sweater and a clip-on tie.) I must have heard a thousand sermons during my childhood, and I don't remember most of them. I do remember the time a cat walked across the stage during the preacher's sermon. I remember how delicious Vivian Gossett's hickory nut cake tasted at church dinners. I remember the page numbers in the hymnal for some of our most-used songs. I remember the ticking sound of the old oak clock on the church wall. And I remember the night when I walked down the aisle to affirm my faith in Christ, and how the preacher quoted Acts 2:38 before he baptized me.

When I was a little boy, my Sunday school teachers planted God's Word in my heart. When I was a rebellious teenager, seasoned Christian leaders loved me anyway and pulled me gently back in the direction of faith. When my grandparents died, Christian friends shared our family's sadness and brought food to our house after the funeral.

I remember my parents' uncomplaining faithfulness. How we survived and thrived on a farmer's unpredictable income is still a mystery to me. My mother bought 10 loaves of day-old bread for a dollar. She sewed patches on our blue jeans in the spring so they'd last till the end of the school year. Dad milked cows every morning and evening year round. In the summer we filled our freezer with corn and other vegetables from our garden. And through good years and bad, Dad wrote a check for the church offering every week.

Parenthood seems awfully complicated today, and moms and dads feel a lot of pressure to bring up their children right. At the core, though, parenthood is mainly just about doing life together. It's about facing good times and bad times with faith—doing the best you can with the help of God and with the help of his people. It's about building memories—big ones, little ones, serious ones, and silly ones—that will shape your children's future.

Years from now, what will they remember?