Horses and Mommies (Part II)

I have had enough pestering about how the posting of a Part I necessitates a Part II, I thought I would get started now that grades are turned in and I have a beautiful three-month break unfolding before me (which will be full of only rest, relaxation, and peace).

Lately at church I think many have been experiencing paradigm shifts, conviction, and a rattling of old ideas long placated in the corner of the cage. Why don't we kneel during prayer? Why don't we raise hands when we sing, especially when we sing about raising hands? Why not wine for communion? Why not have our children sit with us during service?

Wait. Kids? In a pew? For an hour and a half? I don't balk at wine or kneeling or cartwheeling down the aisles, but having a squirmy-wormy four-year-old sit with me? Are you CRAZY? Didn't someone fall out of a window doing that? So I felt, and I was fully prepared to do battle on this point, though without any clear rhetorical points outlined except:

1. A child cannot stay still that long

2. I will not learn anything from the sermon

3. I want a break...I chase this kid around all week!

4. This kid will be so bored she will hate anything to do with Christ because it will all mean nothing to her. Where is the flannel graph?

Enter the part about horses. Follow me here. Growing up I had a half-Arabian, but I trained with a wonderful Quarter Horse trainer. There are many levels to horse showing, with the top 'tier' being breed shows - horses of a feather flock together, I suppose, so the Arabians mainly hang with the Arabians, and the Quarter Horses with the Quarter Horses, and we exchange sidelong glances and little snubs about each other. When I first started showing, we had nothing - I rode a sixteen-year-old grade horse with a borrowed saddle and my Dad's old folded army blanket. By the time I started showing Breed circuit some five or six years later, we had more, but still not much. Going to a show with a trainer brings a whole new set of expenses, but moreover, my trainer didn't go to Arabian shows. So do you know what he did?

He taught me how to ride. Instead of riding my horse at the shows, getting him all prepped, and letting me jump on to smoothly sail into a class, he taught me how to do it all. Warm-up my horse. Study patterns. Groom my horse, prep my horse, ride my horse. He taught himself out of a job (though he was always best with Skyler). That's the goal for a good trainer, preacher, discipler, and parent. You provide the building blocks and tools and experience so that they don't need you anymore. But it's scary. And it's brutal hard. What if they crash and burn? Or what if they fly so well they don't need us?

We did a lot of crashing and burning. My trainer did a lot of studying us to figure out how best to teach us - he became a better trainer, I think, and we became much better riders. He had to work a lot harder to get me where I needed to be than with other students he could be with more often. He had to really know me and Skyler, and we were head cases. He had to spend extra time with me. It wasn't always fun for him. It wasn't always fun for me. We butted heads, we struggled, and we failed. But then, we started to win. And Skyler is one of the best Trail horses I have ever known.

Now, how does this relate to kids in the pew at Church? Our job is to make real riders. Not ones that are entertained, or don't break a sweat, and just breeze through the class. We want worshippers - we want them in the thick of stuff over their heads that seems too hard. We want them to cry a little bit because it seems beyond their grasp. We want them to watch us, to want it, to work for it, and when they get it, to worship like we never did at their age. It is our job not to entertain them, water it down, or simplify it. It is our job to work hard, die to self, and jump in. Know them. Take what they are hearing in church and explain it as simply and yet truly as we can. Crash and burn. Have screaming fits. Cry a little (for everyone involved).

But I am more and more convinced that having your children there watching you makes a world of difference. I didn't study people in my own age division to ride better. I studied the World Champions. I didn't read cute stories about horses, I went after the best clinics and experts I could find. Our kids are watching us. It means more hard work. But we need to shirk a dualism that simplifies the Gospel and makes it entertainment, only to bring deep Bible teaching and Bible living down on our kids when they reach Junior High. Are you afraid of seven-year-old hypocrites in the pew? I'm scared of sixteen-year-old rebels who want nothing to do with a God whose community they have never really been a part of, whose worship they haven't shared in, and whose Word they have only eaten as jello when they might have cut their teeth on steak.

Is it easy? No. Was it easy for Jonathan Edwards to enter college at thirteen? I don't imagine so. Was it easy to watch all the rich kids with their fancy horses ride into the ring and win, while I had spent hours preparing only to come in fourth place? No. But you better believe it was worth it in the end. I can truly ride, I'm not just aping the motions. We're in this together. We're family. I want my kids seeing genuine praise. I desire for them to know it's above their head and it's hard, and buckle down, and work and run and worship like our God is great and above their heads and hard to understand. Because He will honor that, and build big worship muscles. 'Cause it's infinitely worth it.