It is camp time. We take our children to Walmart a few days before departure. If we have boys, we purchase Axe body wash, and urge them to use it more than once during their 6 day stint away from home. There is a boy raised in my home who came home from camp when he was 9 years old beaming with pride. He had gone the entire week without a shower. So…purchase the body wash and give detailed instructions. Hope for the best… Showering at least once during the course of the week is not the only thing parents wonder about when their child leaves for camp.

Will they make friends? Will they have an attentive counselor? Will they eat right? Will they take their vitamins? Will they miss mom and dad? In the case of high school boys, that answer is generally a resounding, “no.” In some cases, parents hope that their little angel is not a discipline problem. In general, parents wonder how there kids will fare out of their normal environment and established routine.

Today at lunch I ran into Tyler. He is a tall and handsome young man. Actually Tyler sought me out at lunch. (I am impressed with any teenager who will initiate talking to an old man.) He told me: “My dad told me to find you at camp.” My immediate response to Tyler was: “You do realize that you have the finest parents on the face of the earth?” He did not flinch. He did not pass go. He did not collect $200.00. He immediately responded with a smile, and said: “Yes I know that.” By this point I was more than impressed. A teenage boy who appreciates his parents…. I wanted to call someone and have Tyler placed on the endangered species list.

I wanted to say: “Tyler, I know things about your parents that you don’t know.” But I resisted. I wanted to say: Tyler, I remember very well when your mother was baptized into Christ several years before you were born. I remember how excited your mother and dad were when they were expecting your older brother.
I wanted to tell him how his dad patiently allowed my boys play on the trucks at Fire Station #8 in Wichita Falls. Most importantly I wanted to tell him that his mom and dad made some important choices before he was born that are going to positively impact him for the rest of his life. There is no point in sharing that now. In a few years, he will comprehend that fully.

In a few years, he will find a young lady who is just like his mother. (You know boys do that… They are drawn to girls who are like their mother. That is good news for Tyler and it is good news for my three as well. He and that young Christian lady will be able to get off to a good start, because of his deep family roots. He will look back and appreciate his parents with greater depth than he does today.
There are not a whole lot of perks to getting old, but I sure am enjoying watching the children of my friends grow up. None of us realized that the choices we were making when we were in our 20s and 30s were going to impact our children who were not even conceived at that moment in our lives. We didn’t know that they would not take showers at camp when they were 9 years old. And we prayed that they would grow up to be God fearing, respectful teenagers who are capable of communicating well with adults who are their parent’s age. God is good.
May He be glorified in the lives of all our children.