The funny thing is that the first time I chopped wood I was on my own and afterwards I found out that I stood wrong, had my hands backwards and had unpredictable aim. Even with all that amiss, I still managed to get a load of wood into the house.
Once I got some insight from the pros around here, my next experience was much better. The real thrill was that first piece of wood that split after just one swing; swoosh, right through the middle.
This is not a scenario I am expecting a lot of you to relate to personally, yet, it is a great picture of a parenting comment I just overheard. A parent said, “Being new parents to twins, we have learned that we are the best experts on how to parent them.” This sounds good, but it is a little like me going out and chopping wood on my own. I just did what came naturally and what I thought I had seen the men in my life do. It worked, kind of, but it wasn’t as good as it could be.
If we just parent “naturally” we will either parent by our emotions or fall into how our parents raised us. So what then?
I know I desire our children to be better than me in every area, including parenting, I would guess most parents want that for their children. So I pray for them to seek God’s Word for wisdom and to learn from godly counsel. Now godly counsel can be the tricky one. There is so much “counsel” out there it can truly make one’s head spin.
Some guidelines I have for myself regarding parenting counsel: Counsel must be truly godly, I would not take ideas from a secular author or speaker for raising my children. Counsel must be backed with success. Just like it would be silly for me to go to one of my city friends for advice on how to split wood, likewise, I wouldn’t go to someone without children or with rebellious children about parenting. Lastly, counsel must work for our family; it can’t be us trying to be something we are not.