The Trek Of The Deer...

So, when I wrote about "How I'm Like A Goat," I also promised you a post about something I learned about deer... This was fascinating to me...

The last day we were there, R's husband, C, took me for a ride in their mule and this was one of the views...

Just stunning... The line of trees that you can see running in the picture, actually run along a beautiful river there, and C was telling me that for 100's of years, the deer have followed a trek that runs through that corner of the field. He said that they had found a lot of arrowheads back there, because that's where the Indians would hunt the deer. Makes sense, if the deer had been following the same trek for all those years, they would be an easy target for hunting.

Well, I was fascinated... "Does anything disrupt their following this trek?" I thought maybe building, tearing up the land, etc would cause them to go elsewhere, but C said, "No, that's why you will often see so many deer in neighborhoods." No matter what we do, they just keep following their trek...

So I said, "C, what will disrupt it then?" The entire herd would have to die out... It gets passed from generation to generation as the young follow the old in the same trek year after year... Amazing...

But it got me thinking... The same is so true for our children! Exodus 20:4-6 says, "You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. ⁵ You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, ⁶ but showing love to a thousand {generations} of those who love me and keep my commandments."

Ugh... back to the whole idol thing again... When we worship modern day idols (back to the goat again) we're just like the deer, teaching our children to walk in the same paths that we walk in... That's one of the reasons why alcoholism runs in families... But when our children watch us seek satisfaction from everywhere else but God, they learn to do the same thing.

This is a portion of one of my all time favorite parenting quotes...

"A child's character is forming under a principle, not of choice, but of nurture. The spirit of the house is breathed into his nature, day by day.

The anger and gentleness, the fretfulness – and patience – the appetites, passions, and manners – all the variant moods of feeling exhibited around him, pass into him as impressions, and become seeds of character in him; not because the parents will, but because it must be so, whether they will it or not...

The spirit of the house is in the members of the children by nurture, not by teaching, not by any attempt to communicate the same, but because it is the air the children breathe."

In other words, it's the path they watch us walk, and follow with us, day after day after day... And just like the deer, it is almost impossible to disrupt that path and cause them to change course, once it's been ingrained in them...

That's why I said the other day, "It's alot easier to stay off of a path, than it is to get off of it, once you're already on it." We have to be so careful of the paths we step onto, because our children are following in our footsteps.

Amazing what you can learn from the habits of goat and deer...

Have a great week... The boys are off to youth camp and the girls are off to somewhere else in the south to visit family... Scott will be holding down the fort... just him and the dog! He'll probably enjoy some peace and quiet!!