Unconditional

Here is the deal...I used to write to Abigail, and to Amelia for a bit. I had these scrapbooks that I wrote in so that in the event I died, they'd be able to know who I was and where they get their weird from.

Then life all kinds of blew up and I realized I had no clue who I actually was. I mean, you always kinda sorta know who you are...but you are also kinda sorta always changing. So if you keep yourself in the rigid little box of "this is who I am"...you end up living a pretty boring and cramped life.

Don't be afraid to change, to grow. If things stop interesting you, challenging you, teaching you- you might want to start looking at burial plots because it seems to me that is the beginning of the end.

Enough of that for today...what I really logged in here to talk about is about God. Specifically who he is NOT, in my humble opinion.

Sometimes, people will tell you stories about God and they will give you warm and fuzzy feelings. Sometimes they will make you hang your head in shame. And there will be a few times in your life that someone will say something so odd that all you can do is stare at their face and try to understand what language they are speaking. Only you will know what is true for you. When something sounds or feels off-trust it. That is the Holy Spirit.

God is different things to different people, and over the course of my life God has been different things to me in different seasons.

I never really took to the idea of God as a parent. Until I had kids. Growing up it seems that people liked to make God this mean authority figure to keep you in line. I think that is crap. I don't want my kids to see me or God that way.  

Now- before you light your torches, hear me out.

I strive to parent my children in a way that they learn to make the right life choices for them. I want them to make choices they are proud of and confident in. I want them to know they can step out in faith because I will be right behind them to soften the fall. I do not want them ever to make a choice because they fear the losing my love. 

I want my children to have a moral conscience. I want them to know right from wrong. But also to know and show humility and grace. We all sin. We all fall, and we get back up.

And that they are loved, without reason and beyond measure.