A Life Without Children

Have you ever seen the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang? I think I was nine years old when I first saw it. My sister Katey and I spent the night at the house of two sisters. We all piled upon their parents’ king sized bed and watched a fun movie full of color, music and Dick van Dyke. But at the age of nine, you fail to see the lesson a movie like that can teach.

If you don’t know the story of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang one of the major parts of the story is a small country where children are outlawed. Because of this edict of the royal couple, the families in this nation hide their children underground. The village is quiet, sad and dark. As the heroine in the movie quickly observes, the problem is there are no children.

Lately my life has been like that. I can go through a whole day and not see one child. I live in a world of adults: adults at work, adults at home, adults in the neighborhood. And – quite frankly – it’s AWFUL. No laughter, no silly games, no imagination, no innocent view of the world, no sitting and chatting with them while we do craft projects. Everything is business, chores, work, politics, spreadsheets, responsibility and seriousness.

When you live in a world like that, every moment with a child is precious. On Saturday, my friend Jenny and I had her two brothers in the backseat of my car while we went to the grocery store and her office. Her littlest brother, age ten, sat back there eating sour straws. All of a sudden, we hear an “Uh-oh!” He had spilled his candy on the floor. A few moments later, he was informing us how wrong it was that two police officers in a car next to us were chatting away. After all, shouldn’t they be keeping an eye on the things in order to protect us from the evils of this world?

On Sunday, a little girl at church came up and gave me a hug. She’ll never know what that meant to me. And my nine-year-old cousin came with his parents for Easter dinner. He creamed me in Yahtzee, but I beat him in swordplay on the wii. We each won a round of bowling. And it was fun just to sit and watch him shoot hoops, play ping pong and bowl some more on my wii.

Now I know that kids are not all fun and games. Of course I don’t have any of my own, but I have my share of younger siblings. And except for a few years in my early twenties and today, I have taught kids on a weekly basis. I know something about the handful they can be. But the next time you want to get away from your kids before you scream, use that imagination from your childhood and seriously consider what your life would be without them. You’ll get a little idea of my life, and I guarantee you won’t like it. Then praise the Lord that He gave us children.