After a week in Southeast Asia, I was excited to see my kids when I got home this weekend. But I wasn’t prepared for how hard it would be to go from zero kids to four kids. I had spent seven days doing nothing but grown-up stuff. Conversing with people, preaching to people, riding in taxis with people, and drinking lots of mud-like coffee with people. It was an extremely hectic week, but it was ordered and calm.
Two words I would never use to describe my house. My kids all want to talk at once, they all want me to answer different questions at once, and they all want me to play different games at once. It’s pure chaos. A friend of mine with four kids says he feels (guiltily) like he’s taking a vacation whenever he goes to the office. Playing and interacting with kids is really hard work. But it’s crucial.
Here’s what Dan Allender says in his book How Children Raise Parents:
Play requires more time and demands more engagement than does your work … work is onerous and efficient, whereas play is fun and prodigally wasteful. You can weed a flowerbed far faster alone than you can by involving a child in the process. One can ride a bicycle far faster and farther without the encumberance of children. A walk will produce more physical exercise when undertaken alone than it can if a child is tagging along asking questions about trees and birds and whether you saw that lizard dart into the rocks…Play is ridiculously inefficent. It splurges and spends, often without any apparent return on its investment. (via)
Think of the ridiculous inefficiencies God endures in order to “play” with us. To love us, and encourage us, and mature us, and train us, so he can use us. He could accomplish his mission on earth so much more quickly and efficiently without us. Praise God he doesn’t.
I’m off to play with my kids. Pray for me.