Hebrews 11

 "If you remember that God promised we would be pilgrims and this world may feel more like a desert or even a prison, you might find your life surprisingly happy. Faith in Jesus does not guarantee that everything will go our way. Look at Hebrews 11. Abel had faith and he died. Enoch had faith and he did not die. Noah had faith and everyone else died. So just having faith does not guarantee your life - or the lives of those around you - will be all candy canes and lollipops. Life isn't always fun, and we shouldn't expect it to be."

Yesterday we took Tkill Academy on the road. Peanut loves science and we spent the morning climbing a very large igneous rock and learning all about its history.

I spent my teen years working at Stone Mountain Park. It was my first W-2 paying job.

High school really wasn't my game and that job was the first time I found my people. I spent countless hours exploring every inch of that park with new friends that first summer.

When we left the park, I took Peanut on a drive by of where I grew up. The two different houses I lived in. The spot where I learned to shoot baskets to champion a game of PIG. The (now leveled) grocery store parking lot where I rode my first dirt bike. The convivence store where I walked to buy the snacks my mother wouldn't. The house where I watched the Challenger launch on a school snow day. The house where I first met SD. The field where I played in the snow during the blizzard of 93.

All these memories are tied to a neighborhood surrounding one address.

2939 Major Court

I still remember that address.

As I drove down the street, I told Peanut about how I grew up on the sewer just outside of that house.

I was raised in a 1980s "play outside until the streetlights came on" kind of street.

I knew the stories of the insides of every house on that street.

I played inside and outside of all those houses just as much as I did my own.

I was thinking yesterday as I was giving Peanut a very G rated glimpse into my childhood - how inside every house on my street was a messy life.

There was no social media or cell phones or cameras in your pocket back then. We floated in/out of each other's houses and life was often not hidden.

In hindsight, it was really a gift to me. It would be years before I knew what was and was not a healthy home life.

Everybody on my street had a different kind of mess than mine but it was all a mess. It was the norm.

My own kids have grown up in an age of illusion.

Where friends use filters to post pictures of themselves. Where everyone always looks like their best.

Where people share the highlight reel - the fancy dinners out, the big vacations, the elaborate gifts. Where everyone always seems happy.

The norm does not appear to be messy.

I've tried to gift them the reality of life.

Love is messy. People argue. They communicate. They work through it. That's normal.

Parenting is a circus where often you want someone else to be in charge of the monkeys. You do your best with what you know. You apologize when necessary. You repair. That's normal.

Life is expensive. You budget. You say yes to some things, no to others. You pay your house bill first. Always. You know the price of milk, gallon of gas, you contribute. That's normal.

Mama Warriors, I listened to a podcast recently where the author really cautioned that we've become a society that prepares the road for the child rather than the child for the road.

She talked about how when we do something for our child that they could do for themselves we send the message that they are not capable.

The more times we can let our kids struggle through a task SOLO and feel that sense of accomplishment on their own - the better at the game of life they will be.

The more we talk through the realities of struggle, challenges the more we gift our kids skills to navigate them.

We have to gift our kids the Hebrews 11 version of the truth.

Life is messy.