I found a great cookbook recently filled to the brim with heirloom recipes, and as I was making kolaches this morning I began to ponder how much bread making reminds me of parenting. The ingredients are many and even if you follow them to a T you might not end up with more than a flat thick blob. Mix all of the ingredients together with a loving and firm hand excited to see the end and anticipating how things are going to turn out and humming a tune as you go. I have see so many parents that started out with too much salt or too much yeast and have had to alter all of the other ingredients in order to still come out with bread at all. There are times at our house when a call out of, "More flour!" is in order because too much butter was added.
There are so many batches of bread that I have made that I thought went well in the mixing and dough phase and was excited to eat warm with butter, but when I came back an hour later I discovered that they had not risen at all, let alone "until double" .
As we love encourage and care for our children in the Lord we have to remember to keep a clear view on how they are doing emotionally as well as physically before we send them out to deal with things on their own. Are they taking on more then they can chew? Are they having more freedoms than they can handle? Then they have not risen until double. Wait, don't push them into the oven. You will end up with an unpalatable brick that can't be fixed. When bread has sufficiently risen until double you can push your finger into it and it won't deflate. Then you can pop it out, shape it into a loaf and into the oven it goes. Happily baking and gaining that crust that we all love.
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