“Most of us become parents long before we stop being children.”

(Lionel Kauffman)

This statement couldn’’t be more true in our family. Jenny and I were practically babies ourselves when we got married, and I shudder when I think of how naïve we were when Hannah came into this world. In fact, I remember looking at the nurse in terror when she told us that we were discharged and could take our infant child home.

But nothing asks us to grow up like being a parent. Suddenly the whole world looks different and you think you’re supposed to have all the right answers. But that mentality is actually the mark of a child. Being a grown up doesn’t mean that you have all of the right answers; quite the opposite, in fact. It means you ask better questions. It means you become able to rise above the fray and see underneath the surface of things. It means that you are able to put away the childish things like pettiness and pouting so that you can pick up the tools of a grown up: patience and humility.