It’s One Blessing After Another

by Mary Alette Davis, Director of Children's Ministries

I have received a great blessing knowing the children, youth and families at Westminster. After my first month here I identified an entire family not just by individual name, but also personality! Each member was unique and so created a unique family to me. On those first Wednesday nights over a decade ago, as parents were ushering their children in and out of choirs, activities, or home to bed, I had this deep feeling of the blessing I was receiving in this work at Westminster. My thought was, “What an honor – this gift, a blessing entrusted to me, to be a part of the lives of families on their life journeys of faith.” 

I am a fellow companion, a guide, a seeker and a servant. My experience as a parent and Christian and my observations of families at Westminster informs this sense that parents are blessings to their children.

Faithful parenting is not always easy...

• From encouraging their freedom to explore this great world to creating boundaries that will protect them until they are ready;
• From getting them to try new activities to requiring them to give them up;
• From getting to church to finding regular ways to practice faith outside of church.

Yet parents at Westminster volunteer regularly with faithful zest: as teachers, and as servants on councils, committees, mission trips, retreats and FEAST… all while getting children to lessons and practices, making sure homework is done, fulfilling their own jobs and responsibilities outside the home, and nurturing their child’s growing capacity to love others as themselves.

Dr. David Walsh

But it doesn’t end there either of course! While we seek ways to transmit blessings to our children, we come up with questions and doubts. Ever changing cultural norms and technology make us wonder if we are really up to this task. Each family has its own questions, setbacks and challenges. But we are blessed with experts who are on this journey with us! On Sunday, October 9 at 9:15am, Dr. David Walsh, world renowned psychologist and writer on family, faith, culture and technology is speaking to our concerns as 21^st century parents. Read more about him here. His expertise comes from research on the brain and development, years of counseling families and parents – and finding humor in it all, maybe because he’s a dad too. May this provide another path into the fullness of God’s grace for our families, rippling more blessings into the future, beyond and above our calculations.