SOW DEM OATS

Thinking back to my oater days, I had one of the poorest harvests I know of.

This was partly because of lack of opportunity and I was in survival mode.

I was poor and sowing oats cost money. I never had to worry about a hole in my pocket, cause I didn't have anything to put in it. I only put my hand in it to rest my arm.

I did learn something from that experience; if you don’t sow you don’t harvest, but if you do sow you will reap what you sow.

Seeds will always stay true to their nature, and will thus reproduce themselves.

Sowing wild oats is a term often used to express different kinds of behavior which is unacceptable in some circles. It’s a lapse of good morals, a loosey goosey attitude toward societal standards.

Some dads swell up with pride when their sons kick over the traces, a chip off the old block feeling. They compare and relive some of their escapades in times past.

The feeling usually isn't quite the same when their daughters do it. Though the standards are blurring somewhat, it still isn't the same when the daughter comes home pregnant.

Seduction is a reduction in moral and spiritual values, at least for a given period of time, and can have results that last for a lifetime.

These wild oater times cause parents to vacillate from love, to disgust, and back to love again. Despite parent’s best efforts, kids will make bad decisions that will negatively affect the parents comfort zone, which the parents dislike very much.

My experience has taught me that much of living requires making the best of a bad situation, and requires a person to grow up a little more than they expected, or wanted to have to.

No matter how often we tell our kids how dumb their decisions are, they always think they are much smarter than we are, and they will try to prove it by experimenting on their own.

But that’s life, that’s the way it works, and the best a parent can do is to find those teachable moments when you can reach them. Those moments get farther apart as they get older, and too soon, they almost fade away. (Guess how I know that?).

What kids need more than anything else is an anchor of stability in parents, dependability, for without that there is a void, emptiness, a hole that desperately needs to be filled, someway or by someone.

God has given that job to parents, a job we must succeed at.

Proverbs 22:6 train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.

(But LORD help them during those wild oater days)

Remember even cars in the junkyard can be restored; all it takes is a willing car, lots of time, and much effort.