I often find myself attempting to teach our children about things that I learned about long ago. It is one of the joys and challenges of being a parent. I am always amazed of how much I have forgotten over the years and those stories and details that I have not.
The other day I found myself re-learning about Christopher Columbus as our son read to me his History lesson. I had learned all about his voyage to the New World in 1492 when I was in grade school. I had learned of his ships and of the King and Queen who supported him. I did not remember how the sailors then called the western sea the “Sea of Darkness.” Neither did I remember being taught that Christopher Columbus’ father was a weaver, as was his grandfather, and that Christopher’s dream of being an explorer was not welcomed at first by his parents.
As we continued reading about Columbus, I found myself interested in an entirely new area of History. Instead of concentrating on just names, facts and dates, I wanted our son to consider what made a man great and what made another “not so great.” We began making a list of historical figures and their character traits while reading his History lessons.
Christopher Columbus was inquisitive, studious, brave and relentless in pursuing what many would consider impossible. He was a young man full of faith. Yet I wonder where we would all be today if his parents insisted he stay at home and be a weaver?
Our young children are already beginning to tell me what they want to be when they grow up. My five-year-old insists he is going to be a race car driver. My eight year-old wants to be a paramedic and dreams of driving an ambulance almost every other night. No one in our family has driven race cars or ambulances and I often catch myself trying to sway them into considering other careers, careers more like their father’s. But they are not their father.
I am praying that as our children grow my husband and I can be like Christopher Columbus’ parents and be willing to support our children in their dreams. I know it will require trusting the Lord and overcoming my own fears of their failures, injuries and worse. A parent’s worries are a “Sea of Darkness” indeed. As our children grow and desire to journey out into new worlds where we have never been I pray that we won’t hold them back. In the end, I want it to go down in the record books that we believed in our children and supported them in every journey that they believed the Lord placed in their hearts because that is what matters most.
… your unfailing love, LORD, supported me. – Psalm 94:18
