Read Proverbs 17:6

We cannot change the past...and that includes the way we reared our children.

All of us—yes, every parent I have ever met—would love to step into the time tunnel and return to the Island of Second Chance. We would give anything to relive those years and correct the failures and mistakes we committed the first time around.

All such fantasy wishes need to be erased. They can never be fulfilled! The parenting process offers only one try per child, one day at a time, never again to be repeated.

Someone once said, "Life is like a coin; you can spend it any way you wish, but you spend it only once." That is never more true than with rearing children. About the time we get fairly good at it, our kids are all young adults and gone. Having come closer than ever to perfecting the process, we suddenly realize nobody is listening! Which means we're qualified for one major role: grandparenting (when it becomes our right to break all the rules and spoil those darlings!).

It's a funny world.

Excerpted from Charles R. Swindoll, Wisdom for the Way (Nashville: J. Countryman, a division of Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2001). Copyright © 2001 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.