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Gary is a Bellingham, Washington-based writer and speaker. His books include Sacred Parenting and Devotions for Sacred Parenting. Like most dads, Gary watches his kids compete in various sports. He and Lisa and their kids go biking and walking together. And they love playing all kinds of board games and card games.

Gary teaches courses on spiritual formation at Western Seminary in Portland, Oregon. He runs marathons and occasionally golfs "to build humility."

I wish I could start parenting now. At age 41 I feel more mature, more settled in my career, with a better perspective to begin parenting than when Allison was born to me at age 25. But here's the rub. What helped me to become more mature? What has given me a better perspective? What has worked on my character over the past decade and a half?

Raising my kids!

I wouldn't be the man I am if I hadn't raised Allison, Graham, and Kelsey. Not that the "man I am" is particularly mature or wise, but he's more mature and wiser than the young man he was at 25. To be sure, God can mature a soul in other ways, but in my own life, raising children has provided a major pathway to spiritual formation.

I believe God cares just as much about my own growth as he does about Allison's, Graham's, and Kelsey's. He wants the process of parenting to change all of us.

Adapted from Sacred Parenting (Zondervan, 2004) by permission.

Copyright © 2006 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.

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Prayer for the Week

Thank you, Father, for using my children to reveal where it is I need to grow up, and to push me to put their needs ahead of my own.

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