Ninjas are very important in our house. It is impossible to over exaggerate this point.
They loom large in the minds of my boys who spend hours flinging themselves off beds, leaping sofas, hiding behind doors, and rescuing me (whether I like it or not) from unseen foes. I think they view ninjas as a cross between the Hulk, Superman, a Jedi Knight, and their dad.
I watch their boy hearts swell with pride at their own prowess. Acting out like ninjas is how they follow the map of their own DNA, leading them deeper into themselves. Deeper into the boy muscles they long to flex, the courage they want to own, the leaders they want to be.
“Boys in this stage of development tend to love superheroes and are fascinated by the concept of superpowers. Much of their imaginative play will revolve around these two ideas.”
Wild Things: The Art of Nurturing Boys, p.44.
They are teaching me that what sounds like a lisped fascination with “injas” is a key to their rich inner lives and growing concepts of good and bad, righteous and evil. My goal is becoming to connect this inner world of fantastic heroism with the outer world where mom, dad and Jesus live.
So, forget gentle Jesus meek and mild. I want my boys to meet the Jesus whose cousin was a wild man living in the wilderness eating locusts and braving swarms of bees for their honey; the Jesus who spent hours working wood, building, hammering, sawing, chopping just as my boys love to do; the Jesus who sent a herd of pigs squealing, bellowing and charging over a cliff and into the ocean to save the life of a man everyone else thought was just plumb crazy; the Jesus whose best friends were rough, salty fishermen and who was just as comfortable camped out on the beach as in the homes of rich men and lawyers.
I want them to want to live and breathe the Jesus stories just as much as the ninja ones. But I want them to know the Jesus ones are real.
I want them to know the Lion of Judah in all his gorgeous, glorious awe and hear Him roar as he stood up for the kids all the other grownups were trying to shoo away. I want Him to become a central character in their childhood imaginings, so I introduce Him at every opportunity I get. Because I think He was anything but a pasty faced, long-haired, peace-loving hippie who smiled vapidly at life as it passed Him by.
I think He and His army of angels are more pulse-poundingly exciting than any “inja” story my boys might dream up. So we share with them in Technicolor descriptions until they own the heroic truth and the revelations fuse to their imaginations.
Because this letter I read today? It hurt me: “Our parents did not spend time teaching us to love God. They put us where we are surrounded by the Bible. But they didn’t take time to show us that God was important enough to them to tell us personally about Him.”
We want to tell them. At every bend, every bed time, every afternoon-movie-watching-marathon, every time we dig dirt or get stuck in the mud. We want to root their wildest imaginings of bravery right into their real lives.
Because we believe it. We believe Him.
We don’t always succeed. But we’re determined. So we keep on trying just as the hero of any good tale knows to do.
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Reminds me of Deuteronomy 6:6-7 – “These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” Every single thing we do is an opportunity to point our kids to Jesus. I’m so glad you do that.
This post is really beautiful and encouraging. Talking about God and Jesus at our house with a 2 and 4 year old is a bit challenging at times. It forces me to look deeper at how I’ve seen or felt God in my life. As for explaining Jesus, that is a whole challenge in itself. We have only explained Him in simple, generic, family-tree like terms with God.
Thank you!
Love this post, Lisa-Jo … especially your assertion that the boy behavior (that so often perplexes me, if I’m being honest) is their way of building “the muscles they long to flex, the courage they want to own, the leaders they want to be.”
Just as our little girls need us to help them figure out what it means to be a woman in a culture where party-girl pop stars get all the attention, our boys need us to reinforce that their impetus to conquer is God-given and (paired with gospel-love) good.
Wow!!!!!!
I’ve just started reading a book called Growing Kids with Character and the task really seems soooo enormous. My little boy is supa busy, wild, srong willed, aggressive,determined, happy, loving, inquisitive and he’s only 2 in a few days. I haven’t even gotten to the stage of super hero’s!!!!
If I can’t teach him to know God, to love Jesus, to be moved and comforted by the Holy Spirit, then anything else I teach him doesn’t mean much. Aagh!!!! I think he will learn when he sees my husband and I doing (being) those things.
i love love love this title!!!! it’s awesome. and i love the post. we want to do the same with teaching our children about god’s love, loving god and loving others. i don’t want to fill their minds with scripture forgetting the reason for the scriptures….to be applied…lived out in love! thanks for this post! i always always find encouragement from your writing.
I want these for JDaniel too. He pretends to be so many things he has seen on cartoons. I want him to retell Bible stories to in his play.
Dear Lisa-Jo, I love this post for it’s content, word choice and placement!
And, I love little make-believe superhero’s!!
Thank you!!
Beautiful. My heart hurts, too. Oh, I don’t want to get caught up on raising my kids AROUND the Bible or AROUND church or AROUND Jesus…I want them to be crawled up in His lap, riding on His back and giving Him high-fives! (You know I mean that w/all reverence and respect.)
Thank you for this!
Yes, exactly – I want them to be participants in the Jesus story and not just passive viewers.
{Standing ovation going on right now for you}
Everything you said…me, too! Me, too!
So encouraging, as always you are! I keep thinking that this fascination with superheros is a bad thing, that my 5 year old should not be destroying enemies, but loving them. So wonderful to be reminded that he is ‘normal;’ that God destroyed enemies and Jesus overcame Satan’s temptations.
I will work harder to put Jesus into his stories and work on THAT superhero angle! Thank you.
Yes, yes – it seems to me our mini-men are hard wired for superherodom -and I think it’s because they have Jesus in their veins.
And reading books like Wild Things: The Art of Nurturing Boys has really helped me process that and find creative ways to enter into this language that comes so naturally to boys.
Enjoy it! :)
How this mama of boys loves, relates to, wants to call out the words of this post! “I want them to know the Lion of Judah in all his gorgeous, glorious awe…” Amen, Lisa-Jo. May we teach our boys to celebrate that God created them, in all their superhero-ness, in HIS image!
I LOVE this story…I did a post about Jesus being our hero (in a different context) this week. I so want that to be a part of my sweet little man’s life. That we teach all my kids the love of Jesus, the grace of Jesus that deserves our love. Oh that they would be saturated in it!
Here is the link to my hero post just in case you want to see it. http://wp.me/pPf6R-eU
Blessings to you today Lisa-Jo…Pretty soon you will be adding a princess and wanting to introduce her to her prince…Jesus!
Oh Lisa-Jo! Every time recently that I’ve come here (maybe always?) you make me cry…good cry.
I love everything in here and just when I was done my son came in with his blankie and sat on my lap and I asked him, ‘JJ, do you know that Jesus is the best superhero ever?’ and he said, ‘Yes.’ and then he said, ‘Mommy, Jesus obeyed.’ And I said, ‘yes He did. All the time. and He can give you the strength/power to too!’
Well, just thank you…this one is staying with me!!! forever! as long as I’m a mama, that is:)
Amen and amen.
You’ve spoken my heart on this one. I’m so with you on this.
you know, i think this is something i don’t think enough about with the little people in my life. we talk about Jesus and praying and making decisions and asking Him for help. but do i spend much time just telling the stories, like i tell them stories about me when i was little? i totally don’t. i just didn’t realize it.
thanks for pointing it out :)
So cute. At my house it is all princess outfits. But I agree it is how they were created. A thumbprint of their creator. :)
lisa-jo, i love how you are teaching your boys that they, too, figure into Jesus’ Story. how wonderful for little hearts to realize that he is our strong tower and mighty warrior who fights for us.
this is only one of the biblical narratives, though, and i do find the grown-up john eldredge, “Jesus-as-every-macho-mel gibson-movie-character” version to be alarming and problematic against the whole of scripture, but i know that isn’t the point of this piece.
lovely.
Oh yes, I know just what you mean. Macho GI Jesus can be taken to extremes, can’t he? But you got it, I was focusing on the elements of His character that little boys can relate to and it’s been such a blessing to us to share those with them and point out that not only Spiderman and Superman are cool, Jesus is too!
I found your blog through a friend’s facebook sharing of this post (http://lisajobaker.com/2013/07/when-you-think-your-love-story-is-boring/) and have been reading some of the older posts. Thank you for the encouragement you offer to so many! This post in particular has challenged me to re-think my priorities and filled me with a desire to teach my baby daughter to love God in a powerful, familiar, and intimate way.