Our girls are precious cargo, treasures, like fragile crystal.

HANDLE WITH CARE.

My husband is protective, cautious, wise and strong, and he will go out of his way to make sure our daughters are treated like beautiful creations of God.  My husband used to joke with the girls about the day they brought home a boy. “I will be cleaning my guns.”  He would say, and they believed him.

Many people have asked us what our “policy” is on dating.  Well … that is a deep, deep subject.  I am not going to go into all our “policies” since they are still being formulated, however I will try to share some of our thoughts.  For the first time, we are thinking about this on a serious level as our oldest daughter approaches 16 (gulp) and seems to have a special interest in her life.  While we don’t believe in “controlling our children” and setting up unrealistic rules that will lead them to a life of rebellion and bitterness, we fully plan on locking our girls away until they are 30…ok, not really.  Lets move on.

First of all, we trust our girls. We have had 50 million conversations on the subject of dating, what is a boyfriend, what is just a friend, and what is the purpose of dating.  We thought we had properly indoctrinated our girls to believe that they were made with sugar and spice and everything nice and boys are made of greasy, grimy gopher gutts, and that having a boyfriend before they turned 30 was simply unnecessary.  For the first 10 years of their lives, they bought this, but things changed with the onset of puberty.  Darn it!  On a serious note we have talked with the girls openly and honestly on the subject of dating, asking them lots of questions so they could think through the issues of dating for themselves rather than completely imposing our views.  We wanted them to have buy-in.

A side note – Did you know that many parents, especially dads, tend to reduce their affection for their children during their child’s puberty?  I read this somewhere, and I wish I could remember the article, but it stuck with me.  It’s true that some kids resist affection, no longer do they want any kind of PDA from their parents at school or church etc.  However, during puberty, a child goes through a rollercoaster of emotions and insecurities, and confusion, and lack of understanding of what is happening to them, and outbursts, and crazy head spinning hair-brained moments.  So imagine what happens when a young girl going through puberty doesn’t get hugged and held at home.  Where is she going to go?  DUH!

Back on subject now.

Secondly, my husband has spent the last 16 years of life investing in his girls.  He purposely takes them all out on dates, and treats his girls the way he wants any boy to treat them.  He prays over his girls, and he would die for his precious cargo.

He told Julia, “Any boy who wants to date you will date me as well.”

This is not a scare tactic (though I admit it may be intimidating).  Rather, Stephen wants to know the person who makes his daughter’s heart pitter-patter and he wants any boy to know that his daughter is precious.  There will be expectations passed on.  He wants the best for his daughters.  Nothing wrong with that!

How does Julia feel about this?  She smiles because she knows and loves her dad and trusts him.  She loves the Lord and she wants to do things right.  It makes her a little uncomfortable, but she is not the least resistant to this idea … for which I am grateful.

So my friends, our dating policy is still being formed, but it has Biblical standards attached.  Our ways may not be popular within this world, but we have never worried about being popular in the world.  We don’t have rose-colored glasses on and believe our daughters will never make mistakes, but we will do our best to help them have healthy friendships and relationships with the male species.  As Grace said so well the other night to her older sister, “Let’s keep Jesus between you and your friend.”  J