A Difficult World

Good evening.

Unfortunately our children are growing up in a very difficult world.  In many ways they are facing more challenges than I ever had to while growing up.  That's not to say that we didn't have our own challenges, but it is just different.  Perhaps the problems facing our children today are similar, but they certainly are magnified if nothing else.

In my childhood the parents had to worry about us using pot and drinking wine coolers.  There were exceptions of course, but for the most part this was the worst of it.  We experienced bullying inside of schools and for the most part we were told you had to "get tougher".  

Now, we have a meth epidemic.  Young people in our community are dying by the day and even those trying hard to fight it are losing the battle.  We also now have social media which provides bullies a forum for spreading pictures and rumors which are driving more children to desperate measures.  We can find tapes of kids fighting, having sex, and doing horrible things to other kids.

Our community is now faced with a young man that has committed suicide.  Apparently, for reasons I do not know, he decided life was too hard and he hung himself.  He was a high school senior.  He could not have been more than 17 or 18 years of age.

I heard about this during church this morning.  Our Pastor prayed for this young man, and then he talked about the couple of children in our congregation, one of them being my daughter.  He prayed that these 2 girls, who are such a blessing to all of us, that they be protected from the evil and the tragedies we are seeing so many children being pulled into.  

I looked at my daughter, and my son.  And I wondered how in the world I would ever have the courage and strength to protect them.  The bad things in the world seem to be so big compared to little me.  

How do we protect our children in such a difficult world??

I don't have the answer.  It scares me to death honestly.  What I do know is I love them, and I tell them both every day that I see them.  I'm sure I tell my daughter multiple times every day that I love her.  When they do something great I let them know how proud they make me.  We also try to surround them with people who share our desire to protect them.  We have them involved with the people at church, where we hope they are hearing powerful messages of love and faith.  We have Sam involved in healthy activities like swimming.  

Is it enough?  Only time will tell.  It's a difficult world.  

Be well and God bless.     Tom