Before Bethany and I had kids, our schedule was a lot more open. I’d say it’s that way for most people though. One way that we filled our time each week was by serving with the Wednesday night programs at our church. Bethany with the younger kids and me with the teenagers. Over the course of several years, I developed pretty close bonds with quite a few of the kids. Many of those relationships continue to exist well into adulthood for them which is cool to see.
I bring this up because I once had a parent comment to me
just how important it was for kids to have someone in my stage of life (i.e. an
adult who wasn’t a parent of a student) helping with the youth ministry. According
to her, something about being an adult but not a parent makes one automatically
cool. While I didn’t necessarily believe that at the time, now that I have kids,
I see it and I appreciate it. While they aren’t yet teenagers like the kids I
was working with, my kids already have someone like that in their life and I
love to see it.
On Thursday, there were two agenda items for the day. Agenda
item number one was to go to the Zoo and have a great day. Agenda item number
two was to go to Back to School Night at Fox Hill and meet the kids’ teachers.
If you ask me which of those two things the kids will remember longer though,
it’d have to be our trip to the Zoo. I say that because our friend, Emily, was
along for the trip. We first met Emily when Ellie was around two years old when
she was part of the college student life group we led at the time. Since then, Emily
and Bethany have met together weekly to talk about life and how God is working in
them. It’s been cool to watch happen and see how their relationship has grown
over the past five or six years.
Our original plan for this Thursday trip to the Zoo was
actually to go to Worlds of Fun with Emily. However, I’m a scrub and had no
idea that WOF closed for the season on Monday due to workers starting back to
school. Lucky for us, the Zoo was deemed a worthy replacement to our plans for
the day. Emily arrived at our house around 8:50 am and we all loaded up in the Traverse
and headed to the Zoo.
There’s not a ton of specific animal-based moments that
stand out about our trip to the Zoo (unless you count Charlie the gorilla
happily picking his nose and eating his boogers). What does stand out though is
watching Ellie and Ethan excitedly sharing their lives with their friend,
Emily. They talked about school, vacation, games, TV shows, church, and
everything else in between. What I like though is that it’s not just the kids
talking at Emily. She’s actively engaged in asking questions too and wanting to
know all about what they’re thinking.
It's obvious that as a young adult, I didn’t see the importance in having a young adult taking an interest in a kid’s life. I probably assumed that there were parents and grandparents around to do just that. However, now I see first-hand how much something like that means to Ellie and Ethan with their relationship with Emily and I just want to take a minute to highlight it as a really cool thing.
And yes, knowing Emily, she’s going to be totally
embarrassed about me calling attention to it, too! All the more reason to do
so, right?
#DaddyWrite
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