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Today, I reflect on how the experiences we never planned for can become part of our family stories, and a curious detail Mark includes about the man who carried Jesus’s cross.
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Today, I reflect on how the experiences we never planned for can become part of our family stories, and a curious detail Mark includes about the man who carried Jesus’s cross.
Being a parent can sometimes involve making some big decisions.
Now that my youngest children are teenagers, I can look back and see how some of those decisions forever shaped our family life together. Choosing when to move home, deciding which schools the children should attend, and working out how to respond to the various challenges that come with raising a family have all played their part.
Of course, plenty of things have happened that we never had any say in. Illness, accidents and unexpected events have shaped our family life just as much as the decisions Rachel and I made deliberately. Sometimes we responded well, and at other times we simply did the best we could with circumstances we would never have chosen. Sometimes, of course, we made mistakes. Looking back, I can see how those experiences have become part of our family story, influencing the way we live together and, I suspect, shaping how our children understand their own lives.
Why am I reflecting on this? Well, I have recently been reading a familiar passage in Mark’s Gospel about the crucifixion. It concerns a man called Simon, who found himself caught up in the final hours of Jesus’s life through circumstances entirely beyond his control.
But when I read it again, I discovered a detail Mark includes that I had never really given much thought to before.
Simon was a dad, and Mark tells us the names of his children.
