Photo by Adam Sherez

Today we released our January E-Journal, our first-ever geared specifically toward resourcing parents of adolescents. We’re excited to take more steps in this direction! We hope you will be, too. Read up, pass along, and give us your feedback!

In this article by Kelly Soifer on helping kids navigate friendships, she shares the following quote from Eugene Peterson:

A search of the Bible turns up one rather surprising truth: there are no exemplary families. Not a single family is portrayed in such a way as to evoke admiration in us. ((Eugene Peterson, Like Dew Your Youth: Growing Up With Your Teenager, p. 110.))

I love this quote. It’s a great reminder to me as a parent, and as one who works with parents of teenagers, that the Bible doesn’t necessarily give us lots of models of families who “did it right.” Like us, those folks were broken. The Bible reveals glimpses into God’s outrageous love for us despite our failure in all areas of life—perhaps most especially our families—and the power of God’s grace to transform lives all the same.

Here at the start of a new year, that’s good news.