AND WHEN THEY ARE OLDER
Larry D. Ballenger
October 1, 1989
It was a simple exchange, standard for a typical, one-day pastors' seminar. But it haunted me the rest of the week.
"How's the family? How are your kids doing?"
"Oh, fine. Well-they're not doing much spiritually."
"Yeah. Well, I can identify with that."
My friend is a pastor, like me. We hadn't seen each other in more than fifteen years. It was good to greet each other again, to see how each of us had changed and in what ways we had remained remarkably the same.
Now, it turned out, we have a new commonality. We have given our lives to preaching and Bible study. We have shared the gospel with other people's kids and now with singles and young couples and students the age of our own children. Yet we both have the gnawing, nagging feeling that our own kids haven't taken it very seriously.
Over sandwiches at lunch we talked about it-about grandkids, about divorce, about disappointment, but also about pride and loyalty and openness. No parent is reluctant to regale hearers with tales of offspring's accomplishments, and we were no different.
I'm sure that my friend, like me, has scores of friends whose kids are missionaries, Sunday school teachers, seminary students, and interns. And I'm sure that, like me, he has experienced the pain and nagging doubt of hearing about someone else's kids and then asking silently: "What did we do wrong? Did the ministry turn them off? Was I away too much? Did I care for others' kids too deeply and allow my own to be cast away?"
All day, and for several days to follow, I thought about our conversation. It troubled me that two fathers would greet each other that way. It seemed to me that we were making the mistake all over again: Allowing ourselves to be too much the preacher, too much the dominie, and ...
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