Hank Smith:                      00:03                   Welcome to followHIM Favorites. This is where John and I share a single story to go with each week’s lesson. John, we are in Genesis chapter five and Moses chapter six this week that talks about how Adam and Eve taught freely to their children. Enoch did as well. It also talks quite a bit about agency and how important agency is to God. I have a story that mixes all these things in together. It’s not a story I share often because it is quite meaningful to me, but it does have some funny elements to it. Years and years ago, when my sweet daughter was our only child, her name is Madelynn. Her name is Madelynn Pitts now. She recently got married. At the time, she was just my little girl, Madelynn Smith. I had a dream about her. In the dream, I was back home in Southern Utah.

                                           00:57                   If you’ve been to St. George, lots of big red cliffs everywhere. We used to play on those cliffs when we were kids. We would play who can roll the rocks closest to the cars without hitting them. Ugh. Fun games like that. Yeah. John, when you’re a kid, those cliffs are fun and exciting, but when you’re a dad, those cliffs are dangerous. In my dream, I’m on top of one of these red cliffs with my little daughter, Madelynn. She’s probably three years old or four years old. Of course, I tell her to not go near the cliff, because I don’t want her to get hurt, so I say, “Don’t go near the cliff.” To which she automatically looks over and thinks, “I’m gonna go close to the cliff,” because that’s what our children do. So she starts going over to the cliff. In my dream, again, this is a dream. I say, “Hey, hey, stop where you are. I don’t want you going closer to the cliff.” And she thought it was actually quite funny, smiled at me and started going faster towards the cliff. Now I’m getting nervous, John, and I go over to her and I use my dad voice. Do you have a dad voice, John? I use my dad voice.

John Bytheway:               01:59                   Oh, I think I do.

Hank Smith:                      02:00                   Madelynn, you stop right there. And she would turn, and she had her back to the cliff, and she looked at me and I said, “Hey, you stop right there. I’m gonna walk over there and get you. ” So I took a step towards her and she smiled and took a step back. And I went, “Okay.” I had to use my big dad voice, right? Like Madelynn Smith, right? Use her full name. Madelynn Smith. Don’t move. I’m gonna come get you. Don’t move. And I took a step towards her and she took another step back. We do this a few times and she’s getting closer and closer to the cliff. I’m really getting upset with her and she is not listening to me. She’s just smiling. She has no idea the danger that she’s in, yet I cannot get her to listen to me.

                                           02:46                   John, if I’d have known it was a dream, I would’ve, like, grabbed her and flown to Disneyland. But I really thought this was real at the time. It was so real. I’m not a dreamer. It’s not something that happens to me often, but this was really intense. I had a feeling, John, in my dream, that I should do something that was entirely against my nature, which was take a step away from her. And I thought that, automatically, I thought that. No, no, no, no. If I take a step away from her and she takes a step back, that’s it. Like, I can’t get to her. And I should have known it was a dream, John, because I did the right thing. I took a step back. And she looked at me kind of confused, this little girl, and she took a step towards me. John, the automatic thing I wanted to do when she took a step towards me was to step towards her and grab her.

                                           03:39                   But I thought, “Okay, that’s not gonna work. That’s not gonna work. Take another step back.” So I took another step back and she looked confused and she took a step towards me and I thought, “What am I doing? Why are we even staying next to this cliff?” I turned around and ran away from her and she laughed and chased me and we were far away from the cliff. Then I woke up. Later on, I was chatting with my wife, Sara, and I told her about this dream. You know, I got into all the details about it. John, you know, Sara. She said, “That’s actually a pretty incredible dream. You know what it means, right?” And I thought, yeah. No. Yeah. I don’t know. Of course. Yeah. Yeah, of course I know. I said, why don’t you tell me what you think it means and then I’ll tell you what I think it means.

                                           04:31                   Because honestly, John, up to that point, I thought it meant don’t eat pizza after 11:00. She said, “You have a tendency to parent a lot like you were parented, which was pretty rough.” I was a brand new parent at the time. I mean, it was our first child. She said, “You have a tendency to parent like that. And I think what something might be telling you that something was heaven,” she said, “I think something might be telling you that when you do that, you’re actually gonna push her towards the very things you don’t want her to go towards.”

John Bytheway:               05:06                   Very interesting.

Hank Smith:                      05:07                   That hit me hard, John, and I remember saying something like, “Well, yeah, that’s exactly, that’s exactly what I thought.”

John Bytheway:               05:13                   Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.

Hank Smith:                      05:14                   Yeah. 100% what I was thinking. She was right. I did have a tendency to do my house, my rules. Here you are, three years old, pick up a toilet scrubber. Let’s get ready to work. You gotta earn your way in this house. And then Sara said something that honestly changed my life, John. She didn’t mean to. It wasn’t a big, huge moment. It didn’t have music. It was just something she said casually that I went and wrote down. She said, “In parenting, we have to learn. It’s not about forcing. It’s about leading. It’s not about forcing, it’s about leading.” And I immediately went to my journal and I wrote that down. When I saw this lesson, the name of this lesson, teach these things freely unto your children, I didn’t read, teach these things forcefully unto your children.

John Bytheway:               06:03                   That’s so good. I think of Jesus being the Good Shepherd and anciently, you would lead sheep. In the Western cultures, we herd sheep with our Ford F-150 and a bunch of dogs. But anciently, you call them by name and they know your name and you lead them. It was kind of that idea. I need to have more dreams, Hank.

Hank Smith:                      06:24                   Yeah, but it’s not something that happens often to me. But there is something about that, especially in some children, and my daughter is one of them who just thought, “Don’t force me. I’ll push back against force,” which is very God-like, isn’t it, John? I mean, God isn’t forced to do anything. He’s not a slave to anyone, yet sometimes we think the best way to help our children is to force them to do something. It can be quite counterproductive. A lot of us parents have to learn the hard way, sadly. We hope you’ll join us on our full podcast. It’s called followHIM. You can get it wherever you get your podcast. We are with Dr. Kerry Muhlestein this week, John, Kerry Muhlestein, Egyptologist, brilliant, funny. He is the whole package. You’re gonna love it. Join us over there and then come back next week. We’ll do another followHIM Favorites.