Life isn’t a fairy tale, so let’s raise our kids with realistic faith

Jesus promised trouble, not fairy tale endings. Jenny Sanders shows how Christian parents can teach children to face difficulties with hope, perseverance, and confidence in God’s love

The fairy tales we read to our children when they were small all ended the same way ‘…and they all lived happily ever after.’ Thoroughly satisfying, it ties up all the loose ends leaving us with a warm glow of hope and expectation that real life will be the same.

Now we can all testify from our experiences that life is definitely not all ‘happily ever after’ but how can we help out children grow up with a balanced realistic set of expectations about life?

I have friends who are like Tigger from Winnie-the-Pooh: optimistic, enthusiastic, always ready to embrace change and challenges with the expectation of a positive outcome. Others are more like Eeyore: pessimists who believe the worst-case scenarios; for them, everything’s bleak.

Just because we’re followers of Jesus, we’re not immune from the difficulties of living in this fallen world

Regardless of where we live on that spectrum, it’s irrelevant if ……