Cancer cells found a weak spot in my body and made themselves at home. Once the tumor rooted itself firmly, it put out tentacles of rogue cells that found their way into my lymph nodes. Through a mammogram for another complaint, the cancer was found out and aggressive treatment wiped it out.

Cancer cells are sneaky and search patiently for a vulnerable spot to land and grow. Rogue cells like bones. I learned that strengthening my bones could protect them from an invasion. After the last of six months of chemo treatments, I worked hard to build up my immune system as a hedge of protection against disease. Over twenty years later, I am still cancer free.

Heart disease came next. Two-thirds of those diagnosed with this particular heart condition either get worse or stay the same. I wanted to be in the one-third who get better. No one could guarantee how to make that happen but I realized that my best defense against it progressing was to strengthen my core, to do whatever I could to strengthen the heart muscle along with the other muscles and bones in my body. Exercise, vitamins, medication, careful oversight by my doctors, healthy eating - though none of these might appear to be heart and cancer fighting soldiers, each one works as a boundary that slows down the advance of disease. Slowly but surely my heart is getting stronger.

When our daughter heard that her dad's "good hip" was giving him trouble, she researched what she could do to protect her own body from succumbing to what seems to be a genetic condition. The message didn't change: Strengthen your core with strength training. Strengthen surrounding muscles and bones with exercise.

As I was reviewing Chuck's new book, Teaching Them Young: The Hidden Treasures of the Proverbs, I concluded that he was exhorting parents with the same message: strengthening their spiritual core as well as their children's will help prepare their children's souls to fight off the attack of rogue cells that are looking for a place to root and grow in their children's lives. Each principle from Proverbs is another fence designed to build our children's spiritual muscles and bones so that they can fight off the temptation to look for satisfaction and contentment anywhere but in their relationship to Christ.

Teaching Them Young is not a parenting recipe with ten steps to raising a happy child, but rather a call to personal confrontation and doing the hard work of marathon parenting, strengthening our own spiritual cores as we act as personal trainers for our children.

Strengthening my physical core requires discipline and self-denial. I'm more apt to listen to a personal trainer whose physical body reflects the results of discipline and self-denial. Strengthening my spiritual core requires discipline and self-denial. It's a no-brainer to realize that a child in spiritual training might listen more readily to parents whose own spiritual core reflects a lifetime of discipline and self-denial. Teaching Them Young: The Hidden Treasures of the Proverbs is a tool you want in your parenting (and grandparenting) personal trainer's regimen.

In His Grip,
Sharon