I’m Still Growing Up With My Children

When my children were little, I used to say that I was growing up with them.

I meant it then. I still mean it.

They have grown, and I have grown along with them. Becoming their father taught me things I couldn’t have understood before. Becoming a grandfather has opened up more of that understanding. And now, as I grow older, I’m finding that there is still so much to learn.

The more I think about the Father’s love, the more things in my own life begin to connect.

Our Father. Our Creator. God of all.

Those words are becoming more personal to me. I’m beginning to understand something of His heart through what it feels like to be a father myself.

I’m Beginning to Understand My Mother, Too

Sometimes I feel like my children don’t have time for me.

I miss them. Of course I do. I love them, and I want time with them.

But then I remember my mother.

I did some of the same things. I had my own life, and I didn’t always make time for her. Now I wonder how often she felt something like what I feel.

That realization makes it difficult to stand back and judge my children. I recognize myself. Some of what I’m seeing now is something I showed them along the way.

I can see a pattern moving through the generations.

I don’t understand every part of it. I’m still learning what belongs to me, what belongs to them, and what comes with each of us trying to live our lives. But seeing that connection helps me understand my mother more deeply. It helps me look at my children with more understanding, too.

I can miss them and understand them at the same time.

My love for them is still there. It doesn’t disappear because our lives don’t always come together the way I wish they would.

And somewhere in that experience, the word Father is opening up for me.

Love Was Already There

Jesus said that if we have seen Him, we have seen the Father.

That has been staying with me.

The love I see in Jesus began with the Father. Jesus came to reveal Him—to help us know the One whose love was already there.

I think about how much I love my children and grandchildren. I think about wanting to know them, wanting to enjoy them, wanting them to know who their father and grandfather is.

Then I think about our Father.

My own experience gives me a little window into something much greater than I can take in. I’m learning about His heart through the love I have for my family, through missing them, and through remembering that I have also been the child whose attention was somewhere else.

I’ve spent a lifetime needing to understand things.

I have to understand. I keep asking why. I keep looking for the connections.

I believe that desire is a gift God gave me. As I grow older, I’m beginning to see some of what it has helped me recognize.

When I think about God writing His word on our hearts, I think about the life I have lived. I believe He has kept meeting me in it, helping me understand things I could once only hear or read.

Now I’m beginning to recognize that story.

My story.

That amazes me. I don’t know whether anyone else will feel the same way when they hear it, but I want to tell it. I want Talking About Jesus to carry something of the relationship I have known and the understanding that is still growing in me.

The Hope I Carry

When I look toward the future, I see an eternal future.

I carry the hope that the Father will restore all our relationships. I hope that what we have struggled to understand about one another will someday become clear, and that love will have room to be enjoyed fully.

I think about my children, my grandchildren, and all the generations that will follow them. Great-grandchildren. Great-great-grandchildren. People I haven’t met and cannot yet picture.

Sometimes I imagine having a thousand years to get to know them and love them.

And then my imagination fills up with babies and toddlers.

I love babies and toddlers. The thought of being surrounded by all those little ones brings me such joy.

Fun, fun.

I don’t know exactly what eternity will look like. This is a picture my heart reaches for when I think about the future with Him. There is so much love I would like to give, so much I would like to enjoy, and so much time I would like to have.

That hope is precious to me.

Some Things Are Between Him and Me

There is another part of this relationship that is difficult to explain.

Some experiences with Jesus have felt deeply intimate. There have been joyful moments when I felt like I was His love.

That is the way I know to describe it.

I think about the intimacy a man and woman share alone together. There are things in that relationship that belong to the two of them. Other people may see their love, but they don’t know every private moment of it.

That helps me describe something of what my relationship with Jesus has meant to me.

I can share the story and what it has done in my heart. Some of the experience itself remains between Him and me. Nobody else has to know every part of it for it to be precious.

There is something wonderful about that.

I’m growing older, and I’m still growing up with my children. I’m still discovering things about my mother, my family, myself, and the Father.

And I’m still getting to know the One who has been with me through it all.

Scripture Connections

• John 14:9 — Jesus reveals the Father
• Psalm 103:13 — A father’s compassion
• 2 Corinthians 3:2–3 — Written on human hearts
• 1 Corinthians 13:12–13 — Growing toward fuller understanding
• Revelation 21:3–5 — God’s presence and the hope of renewal