"What if" books form a sub-genre in historical literature. A historian will start thinking about what might have happened had events in history turned out differently. What would have happened if Robert E. Lee won at Gettysburg and the South subsequently triumphed over the North? What would have happened had General Burgoyne, who commanded British troops at Saratoga, actually won the battle? "What if" is an entertaining mind game.

We don't find ourselves playing the "What if" game with respect to parenting, but we have given some thought as to what our priorities might be if we were to bring a child into the world at this moment in time. Over the next three issues, we will share some of our thoughts along those lines.

Norman and Ann

According to Psalm 127: 3, "children are a heritage from the Lord." (2) We are providing the parents of our newly born children an opportunity to commit themselves to the formidable task of bringing up their children in ".... training and instruction of the Lord" as Paul encourages us to do in Ephesians 6:4. Sometimes we wonder what we would do if we were new parents today. Norman remembers a day in February of 1961, when he sat on a bench in the hall just outside the delivery room at King's Daughters hospital in Temple, Texas and through those thin walls he heard the first cries of our firstborn son. At that moment he became a Daddy and wondered how on earth he was ever going to handle a responsibility like that.

Ann had a much harder job as she was giving birth to our first-born son. For the first few days after delivery she spent a lot of time learning to breastfeed this new little son. She also spent a lot of time taking sitz baths so she could sit down in a chair without a pillow. In those days (forty-one years ago) a new mother spent several days in the hospital. After we got home she realized why. You at least got some sleep and the nurses would bring the baby to you to nurse and come get him when he was finished. Ann took advantage of that concept by teaching Norman that this was his job.

We think today's parents have a tougher job than we did. The world is a much harsher place to live than it was in 1961. Today's world is dirtier, colder, meaner, more secular and materialistic than the world we brought our son into in 1961. But we don't believe that it is impossible to raise Godly children in our world today. If it were, surely God wouldn't let this old world stand. And everything is not so negative as you might imagine. James Dobson gets 6,000 letters a day from mothers and father who want to raise their children in a two parent family where love prevails.

So what can we recommend to today's parents? We don't have a cookbook formula that's guaranteed to make your children turn out right. Nobody does. But you can give a child some advantages. It's kind of like coaching sports. The best coach in the world can't win football games because he doesn't play a single down on the field. But a coach can teach, a coach can motivate, a coach can encourage, a coach can discipline and in the end a well-coached team with mediocre talent will probably beat a poorly coached team with great talent. A parent functions like a coach. Take note of God's description of Abraham's work as a father in Genesis 18:19 "For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing what is right and just, so that the LORD will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him."

Abraham was given the responsibility of directing his children and his household to keep the way of the Lord. How do you do that? In our next issue we share some specifics that we would make priorities if we were starting over as parents.

"It is not in doing what you like, but liking what you do that is the secret of happiness." - James Barrie. You will find this and other short but thoughtful quotes