Safe. Wholesome.
Fun and food for kids of all ages.
Where a kid can be a kid.
Chuck E. Cheese’s.
It was 5:08pm on a Saturday night. Our son Rett was 2 years old and he had no idea what was about to hit him. We opened the door and my first thought was, “This is a very large amount of people in not a very large space”.
My fatherly instincts kicked in immediately. Stay close. Maintain eye contact. Strengthen the grip. Keep an eye out for suspicious strangers who could quickly snatch up the cutest kid in Charlotte and take him away and we’d never see him again. I never understood overprotective parents until that moment. I think Rett believed the ‘safe and wholesome’ tagline because he relinquished my death grip and took off full-speed ahead—bee-lining it to the mechanical horse ride. He was a kid being a kid.
Rett was clearly the smallest one there. He climbed up into the elevated tunnel that took up half the ceiling. I didn’t lay eyes on his red rosy cheeks and sun-bleached blond hair for 15 minutes—but it felt like an eternity. My head was on a swivel. Looking at the slide, the stairs, the windows, and the tunnels—where was he? He could easily slip out and wander around and a stranger armed with Rett’s favorite orange jellies could lure him into his car and take him away forever. All the 48hours and 60minutes and Oprah and Law & Order shows I had ever seen flashed in my mind. “I could never see my son Rett again,” I thought.
I tried really hard to look cool and come off as that laidback, super-chill parent—so I forced myself to take a deep breath, wiped the sweat off my forehead, and leaned on a nearby wall. “Get control of yourself,” I told myself. The next thing I know, Rett appears at the bottom of the slide with a smile the size of Texas on his face and asks, “What’s wrong daddy?” He could see right through it…
Precious. Special. Blessing. Pure. Adored. Valued. Cherished. Beloved.
Rett.
What means so much to us we will guard it with our life? We will do anything to protect it. Our defense system will let nothing corrupt it or compromise its purity. We only expose it to certain things—things we think will add to its value, improve its character, and cause it to reach its fullest potential. When we are in its presence, nothing else matters. Everything fades to the background.
Our mind.
What if we protected our mind like we protect our kids, our car, our reputation, our career, our house, our retirement, and our secrets? It is said the average human has over 60,000 thoughts a day. So what do we think about? What kind of ‘guests’ do we allow to take over our ‘house’? Some of us have lost control over who and what walks through the door and camps out in our living room. Some of us underestimate how certain thoughts and termites have slowly eaten away at the foundation of our lives—corrupting our joy and peace and purpose.
Commercials and shows and songs and movies and magazines and websites. Be careful little eyes what you see. Be careful little ears what you hear.
God knows that people who live great lives think great thoughts—and people who live not so great lives think not so great thoughts. The scriptures say God offers a peace that can guard our minds—and that we should hold every thought captive—interrogating and questioning and testing and sifting it and kicking it out if it isn’t “true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent or praiseworthy” (Phil. 4:8).
We become what we think. We are what we eat. We do what we think.
Like a thermostat, may we “set our minds on things above” (Col. 3:2), protecting, guarding, and defending the most precious area of our lives – our mind.
May we think like the one whose thoughts were perfectly pure.
Jesus.