Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Time: The Great Equalizer

I did have a nice thing happen to me today! As I was dropping off food to our friend from church, our other friend who is also the pastor of our church was there. Right away when I showed up the two guys came out of the house, and our pastor ran right up to our car to talk to my two boys that were along with me. He spent quite a bit of time talking to them while I got the update about the friend that I had brought the meal for. Afterwards the pastor and I talked a bit and he said to me, "Dollymama, I just want to tell you that every one of your children is a delight. Every time I get to interact with one of them I just love it. They are awesome kids."

Everybody likes to get compliments like this, but this one was especially special. Back about 7-8 years ago he and his wife were becoming parents for the first time and they were heavily into the whole Ezzo scene. I was on my third child and wholeheartedly against the Ezzos. There were some awkward years there where I didn't think much of their parenting style and felt really at odds with them.

Obviously, in 7 years we have all grown and changed. They have two kids now, and we respect and appreciate them enough to attend the church they've started. They are great people. It was just really cool to hear him say that, knowing that at one time everything he was buying into about parenting told him that everything I was doing with my kids was all wrong and was going to result in messed up, unpleasant children. I was on the other side of the fence, worried that his kids would be a mess from strict scheduling and being left to cry. Instead, I've got awesome kids and so does he. :) Funny how that works out, isn't it?

3 comments:

Mimi said...

That is cool! What a testament to both of you guys!

Speckledpup said...

ummm.... (crawling out from under my rock) I don't know what Ezzo is.....

(don't hit me)

The Pup

Dollymama said...

Pup--

Gary and Ann Marie Ezzo have some parenting materials, classes, both secular and pseudo-Christian. Many churches offer their classes to prepare people for parenthood. It's heavy into scheduling the child's feedings and life from birth, vilifies most of the natural parenting methods that I have used, and in short, I detest it! I refuse to link to it even for informational purposes. ;)