Enabling or Helping

What’s on my mind as it’s 5:00 am on a Friday, or better yet what isn’t. Why do our minds decide to work triple time when we are trying to SLEEP!?

Being a parent to six children has come with many sleepless nights over the years ranging from colic to a multitude of a million other reasons!


Before going to bed last night I was listening to Dave Ramsey. A caller had asked a question we have been faced with several times,"should we let our troubled twenty some year old move back in our home?" It seems like a very easy question to answer from the outside. The truth is it’s NOT, it has proven to be one of the hardest if not THE hardest decisions we have had to make as parents! It really comes down to two choices. Do we let our child live on the streets or with God knows who, or do we allow them to live with us under certain rules and conditions that we know they will most likely break?



This decision is not easy and certainly is not as cut and try and without emotion as it may seem . This is the same child you rocked to sleep for at night or when they were sad You wipes their tears. The same one you put on the kindergarten bus and were so tiny they could barely make it up the big bus steps. The same child who won the "most like Jesus" award in Sunday school class and the same one who cried every single time you dropped him off at second grade. The same one who received only positive comments from his teachers and the one who received the "most humble" soccer player award in high school.


Here’s the thing… We are never supposed to make major life decisions based on emotion. Parenthood kind of throws that a curve ball as all those memories cloud judgement I am left with what could I live with if the worst would happen and I didn’t do enough.

With strict rules in place my 20 something child moved back under our roof.
So as I lay here at 5:00 am August 2, I know my child is safe. At least for tonight!