A parent freak

So I’m taking the kids to school this morning, after a stop at the Village Bakery (which should be a daily stop in the a.m. but usually isn’t because a ten year-old and seven year-old aren’t very motiveate-able that early). Adelyn says, “Daddy, I’m glad you weren’t a freak this morning.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“Well, you’re usually running around the house in the morning saying, ‘Get up, get up, you’re going to be late. Let’s go let’s go let’s go,’ and it bothers me.”

“Oh, well excuse me, but that’s not being a freak; that’s being a dad.”

Silence from the backseat.

Out of nowhere, the Christian radio station (KLOVE) plays a quick feature on Toby Mac, former member of DC Talk, and the featurette is entitled “Jesus Freak” and shares a brief story about a Christian martyr.

I said, “Adelyn, that’s what I want to be… a Jesus freak.”

Sam shakes his head, and Adelyn says, “What’s a Jesus freak?”

“It’s someone who does whatever Jesus tells them to do, no matter what anyone else thinks. If Jesus told me to get out of a boat and walk on water, I want to do that, to be obedient to Him. If He told me to move to another country to tell people about Him, I’d want to do that.”

She didn’t miss a beat.

“If He told you to stop spanking you’re kids, you’d need to do that too.”

I looked in the rear view mirror at a smugly grinning daughter.

“Well, Adelyn, I suppose I would. But the Bible says in Proverbs that if you fail to discipline your child, the child will spoil, or become rotten. By spanking, a parent hopes to help their child become healthy and wise as an adult.”

There was a short pause in the conversation.

“I don’t want to be wise,” she said.