{"id":124,"date":"2011-11-11T12:26:00","date_gmt":"2011-11-11T12:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wordynerdy\/2011\/11\/jesus-and-the-helicopter-mom\/"},"modified":"2011-11-11T12:26:00","modified_gmt":"2011-11-11T12:26:00","slug":"jesus-and-the-helicopter-mom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/wordynerdy\/2011\/11\/jesus-and-the-helicopter-mom\/","title":{"rendered":"Jesus and the Helicopter Mom"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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On Monday, I led our church\u2019s Mom-to-Mom group through a Bible study on the helicopter mom of the Bible.\u00a0 Guess who?<\/div>\n
No, not Rebekah, the mother of Esau and Jacob\u2014she sure helicoptered, but she also was so dysfunctional with her strong preference for one son and scheming against the other that I didn\u2019t think she was very helpful.\"\"<\/div>\n
IMHO, the helicopter mom of the Bible is (drum roll please. . .) Salome, the mother of the disciples James and John, the wife of a prosperous fisherman, Zebedee, and (some think) the sister of Mary, Jesus\u2019s mom.<\/div>\n
Salome, with 2 strapping fishers-of-men by her side, strides to Jesus, kneels down and asks him a favor.<\/div>\n
Jesus asks, \u201cWhat is it you want?\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cWhen you come into your glory, would you please put one of my boys at your right and the other at your left hand side?\u201d<\/div>\n
When I go before Jesus on behalf of my kids and he asks, \u201cWhat is it you want?\u201d how do I answer?<\/div>\n
Right now I want one child to respectfully ask me to help obtain \u201cAnnie Get Your Gun\u201d costumes and props rather than handing me a piece of paper and saying, \u201cHere\u2019s your list.\u201d<\/div>\n
I want another child to break through shyness, make deep friendships and overcome math and a math teacher who doesn\u2019t seem to teach.<\/div>\n
And I want yet another child to obsess less about make-up, clothes and thinking she\u2019ll have the perfect life if she gets into HYP (Harvard-Yale-Princeton as she calls it).<\/div>\n
I want all 3 to flourish, to discover and use their gifts on behalf of a broken world, to love and be loved.<\/div>\n
But most of all, I don\u2019t want them to suffer.\u00a0 And that\u2019s what I think is at the heart of the hovering helicopter parenting style.<\/div>\n
Fear that our children will suffer.<\/div>\n
We fear that if we don\u2019t:<\/div>\n