Bjcorbin's Blog

Back in October, my oldest son broke his arm while playing high school football; and what I thought would be a relatively quick run to the emergency room turned into days of hospitalization and multiple surgeries.  Late on that first evening, while under the influence of some pretty strong pain medication, he said, “I wish this had never happened”.  And as he drifted off to sleep, I thought about how often life presents us with situations that we wish had never happened.  Sickness, injury, car trouble, divorce, unexpected bills, loss of a loved one, bad grades, getting laid off, missing the game winning shot, identity theft, unplanned pregnancy, a traffic ticket, betrayal, addiction…  It seems that the fabric of our days has many such threads woven into it. 

In light of that fact, I began to wonder how well we’ve prepared our kids to face that kind of adversity.  Unwittingly, and in the name of protecting them, we can run out in front of our kids, removing every obstacle from their path, and at times, even going back to clean up their messes behind them.  We rationalize that we’re trying to give them every advantage, and get them off to a good start.  But too often they emerge from childhood totally unprepared to cope with the inherent struggles of adult life.  While the instinct to protect our children, and to do for them, isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it must be balanced with the need to prepare them to go out and make a life of their own.  Too many people of my generation are raising their grandkids, and/or paying their adult children’s bills; and often times that is simply the fruit of seeds that we unintentionally planted along the way.

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