Eric Tooker - Parenting from Your Strengths: Understanding Strengths and Valuing Differences in Your Home

Life arrows in the hands of a warrior
are sons born in one's youth.

Blessed is the man
whose quiver is full of them.
They will not be put to shame
when they contend with their enemies in the gate.
(Psalm 127:3-5)

To our seven skirts and one shirt:

You are truly a blessing to us. You have inspired us and encouraged us as we have journeyed to be the best parents we can be. To you we dedicate this book and pray that as you, Mathew, move from being a boy to a man, to a father, and even to a grandfather, you will seek to glorify God all the days of your life. For Kari, Ashley, Amy, Sarah, Laura, Katie, and Abby, as you move from being a girl to a woman, to a mother and and then to a grandmother, you will seek to glorify God all the days of your lives.

We love you with all our hearts.

Contents

Chapter One

If Only We Could Get on the Same Page!

THEY HAD FINALLY MADE IT!

As they pulled into the snow-covered parking lot, the rental car was almost bouncing from all the excitement the Evans family felt. After months of planning and saving and nearly two full days of traveling by car just to get to their dream destination, they'd arrived! They were now just yards away from joining the throng of smiling people, all funneling slowly across the parking lot toward the entrance to the ski resort. The crowd around them wore a rainbow of brightly colored winter outfits, each person making white puffs as they exhaled in the cold, crisp mountain air.

The Evans family were all first-time skiers from a flatland state. This trip to Colorado's spectacular high country was going to be the big one for them all right, the mother of all their family vacations. It would be a getaway they just knew would pile up a blizzard full of wonderful memories and easily raise their family closeness as high as the fourteen-thousand-foot peaks surrounding them.

Soon they would be schussing down the beautifully manicured slopes just like they'd pictured in their mind's eye. Dale, their twelve-year-old son, and Meagan, their ten-year-old daughter, would be skiing right beside their parents. All four of them would be together under a beautiful, ink-blue sky, leaving behind snow trails like a long letter S from their skis carving into the half inch of fresh powder. As they made their wide, gentle turns, the kids would call out things like, Watch me, Mom! and, Isn't this great, Dad?

And most of all, there was the togetherness. Robbed so often by their busy lives back home, here they would be snuggling together on the ski lift, making run after perfect run as a family, and ending their perfect day by clinking mugs of steaming hot chocolate together as they cuddled in front of a roaring fire.

The Evanses just knew this day at the ski slope would be a dream come true.

In reality, it had all the qualities of a nightmare except that nightmares are warmer!

If you've ever been skiing, perhaps you can imagine all the things that can and did go wrong for the Evans family. It began when the rental center at the ski slope ran out of anything resembling shorter skis long before they finally reached the front of the line. Every family member ended up with skis way too long for first-time skiers.

In addition, two of them got boots so tight that by the end of the day, their toes throbbed so terribly that it was a constant effort to blink back tears. The other two Evanses forgot to bring either sunglasses or goggles to the slope. That might not have been a problem if the clear, blue skies they'd dreamed of for months actually were overhead. Unfortunately, by the time the four of them stumbled out of the rental center and walked awkwardly down the stairs in their unfamiliar ski boots, the perfect early morning skies had been replaced by dense, latemorning clouds.

With the clouds that rolled in came snow that was soon blowing sideways, aided by a bone-chilling wind. The blowing snow cut visibility to only a few yards, and that was at the base of the mountain. Visibility would get progressively worse as they started up the ski tows and lifts.

Since Donna was one of the Evanses to forget her eyewear, the blowing snow was the reason that later that day she missed the hard right turn the rest of the family made. The others went right and down the wide, gentle, green slope. Blinking hard with the snow streaming toward her, she missed the turn, skied straight ahead, and never saw her family peel off. When she realized she was all alone, she had traveled so far down the slope, climbing back up to join her family wasn't an option.

Without realizing it, Donna had started down Arnold Swarztaslope, a fearsome run that quickly became narrow and double the slant of her roof at home. Over the next two hours Donna lost count of the times she fell. Time and again, she would do the same thing: bravely struggle to her feet; get her poles and hat in place; and then gently push off, always sideways across the steep slope. Only no matter how hard she tried, she found herself falling head over heels down the mountain at locomotive speed.

It wasn't just Donna who seemed to be in the midst of a terribly bad dream. There was her husband, Jack, getting his ski pole caught in the rope tow on the kiddy slope. While that may not seem like such a bad problem, it actually dragged him down the hill until the busy attendant finally noticed and rescued him.

Daughter Meagan won most frightening moment. On her first trip up the chairlift, she failed to get in position in time and correctly. She was still trying to get in place when the moving chair bumped the back of her legs so hard that she barely caught the edge when she sat down. She was so far forward, she literally would have fallen off the chairlift and dropped a dozen feet had not the stranger next to her grabbed her parka and pulled her back. Then she got her skis crossed and fell face-first trying to get off the lift.

And let's not forget son Dale. In some ways he was in even worse shape than the rest of the family. At least the other three were suffering on the same mountain! Having lost his trail map from his pocket when he pulled out his gloves, Dale didn't realize that the long, cross-country trail he found led to a chairlift that took him to an adjoining mountain. In no time twelve-year-old Dale was literally miles away from the others.

So much for all that family togetherness!

By early afternoon Jack had given up trying to spot anyone he was related to on the slopes and headed to the lodge. There he stood in a nearly endless food line that moved at glacier pace. The long wait allowed him to purchase an overpriced, barely warm cup of watery hot chocolate and a half-cooked hot dog that made him feel sick.

Daughter Meagan had begged to go to ski school and was somewhere on the slopes with a dozen other ten-year-olds and their perky ski instructor.

Donna was still stuck on that same blue slope, having now crossed under the chairlift where the trail became a black diamond, filled with moguls as high as she was tall. And don't forget poor Dale: Hungry. Lost. Alone. Twelve-year-old Dale had no cell phone or money and was unable to remember the exact name of the hotel his family was staying at, much less any idea how he'd ever be able to hook up with them again!