The forty days previous to Easter, also known as Lent, I decided to discipline myself to write my blog daily. It was encouraging to see I could actually do it and the conversations that came about with my daughters were priceless. They learned that their mother is not only strong willed now but was even more so as a child and teenager. They discovered that my little brother and I were best friends until I met their dad. Mostly they discovered that I’m not the same person I was when I was younger– I would hope we can all say we’ve grown and matured positively over the years.

One particular comment came from our youngest (who is thirteen) told me that she thought my family didn’t have any ‘problems.’ “Really?” I asked her with immense surprise in my tone?? She told me she’d just never heard about any of the particular family issues before and so she just assumed my family had no skeletons in the closet. Her comment reminded me of a story I’d read one time in the book, The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom. The following is an excerpt of a memory of when Corrie was 10 years old and riding on the train with her father.

Corrie asked: “Father, what is sex sin?” He turned to look at me, as he always did when answering a question, but to my surprise he said nothing. At last he stood up, lifted his traveling case from the rack over our heads, and set it on the floor. “Will you carry it off the train, Corrie?” he said. “It’s too heavy,” I said. “Yes,” he said. “And it would be a pretty poor father who would ask his little girl to carry such a load. It’s the same way, Corrie, with knowledge. Some knowledge is too heavy for children. When you are older and stronger you can bear it. For now you must trust me to carry it for you.” And I was satisfied. More than satisfied – wonderfully at peace. There were answers to this and all my hard questions. For now I was content to leave them in my father’s keeping.

Perhaps without even realizing it we had kept certain information from our daughters. But looking back it was really to our advantage. Perhaps the weight of the information shared would have been too much for them to carry before now. There are definitely more things about our family I haven’t shared with my girls…and right now I’m going to use Mr. Ten Boom’s incredible wisdom and carry the weight until they are big enough to carry the weight themselves.