The First Five Years

Train a child in the way he should go,
And when he is old he will not turn from it
Proverbs 22:6

Some would say that the beginning of life is when a baby is born. This is true – beginning life as we know it in this world. Others would say that life begins in the womb at conception which we know nothing about – only God who made us. And then there is the further testament that life begins again when we are born of the Spirit of God – a decision which is usually made later in life, maybe as a child, maybe as an adult.

It is commonly known that the first five years of a child’s life are the formative years. When we are born into this life our parents are to become our care givers, teachers, and providers. Many who are reading this may not have had the completeness of this from parents and I in no way wish to minimize that. I only attempt here to write my experiences as a child, privileged to be brought up by a loving family, and then being born again, into the loving family of God.

As little babies we rely completely on our caregivers knowing exactly what we need – being fed, clothed, and loved.

When we are a little older we have to learn to walk and talk. We go through the suffering of teething as well as many other ills. We learn to be obedient by discipline and confident by encouragement. A lot of this learning is forgotten unless we have had a traumatic experience and these first five years are the foundation of the years to come.

The initial problems are called teething. A baby chews on a teething ring – chews, chews, chews – to alleviate the pain of the tooth coming through. He knows to keep chewing because, although it doesn’t take away the problem, the chewing soothes and satisfies him. So as adults, do we ignore the aids that are given to us to help us or do we take hold of them and chew, chew, chew until we come through the problem? What are our aids?

Prayer – communication with God, casting all our cares on Him, because He cares for us.
The Word – bringing us instruction, comfort, refuge, encouragement, discipline, defence, warfare
Fellowship – the support of loving family and friends and with the body of Christ, the Church, where we receive instruction and faith building.

The first step of walking is hard to take – a step into the unknown – into something we’ve never done before. We are encouraged to keep coming as our caregiver holds out hands to catch us if we fall. He stands beside us until we have the courage to take more and more steps.

Our culture likes to teach children to say “please” and “thank you” right from the start. It seems easy to learn “please” as we have so many needs and wants. Then we have to learn that “please” is not a magic word because we are not given everything we want but only what we need. We learn to say “thank you” for everything we are given. So often in the beginning of our walk with Jesus we forget to thank Him – we just take it for granted, or maybe we simply haven’t learned this yet.

There are lots more words to come and a child will copy everything he hears, willing to learn. Sometimes he may not get it quite right but the parents lovingly point their child into the correct way of saying a new word. It may take a while to get it just right and the parent has to exercise patience and perseverance in correcting. A child may be able to say the word correctly right from the start, just by copying the sound. He may hear the sound but it doesn’t come out right until he is shown the correct way and sometimes a wrong understanding is imprinted on his mind and takes a while to come to the surface to be corrected.

This is how our Heavenly Father deals with us – with love, patience and perseverance. We might copy what someone else is doing. Sometimes we will have the right understanding from the beginning; sometimes we get it wrong until we are shown the correct way and then again not understanding may have been marred by deceit and we get it completely wrong.

But the Lord will not allow us to be snatched away so easily and as we open our minds and hearts to God and ask for wisdom, He will reveal the truth to us. He will encourage us or discipline us – whatever is right for us.

A friend once told me that when her old car sprung an oil leak she didn’t take it in for repair as she was afraid of the cost so she just kept filling it up with oil. She finally took it in and 10mins and $15 later it was all fixed! She had spent far more than the $15 already on oil top ups!!

There is no cost when we take the problem to Jesus straight away. He has paid the cost already. Put your trust in Him. Don’t try to fix it yourself and don’t put up with the problem. Take it to the greatest Physician.

I have attempted to write my life memories for the benefit of my children that they may understand the foundation of my feelings and emotions and also to learn the “other side” of me – the God side.

It has been a journey of joy and sorrow, understanding and misunderstanding, trusting and doubting, great faith and little faith. I give glory to God for my life and trust that as people remember me on my passing they will be able to say “I knew Heather and she led me to Jesus”.