Nope.
Picture me sitting here, tears rolling down my cheeks, a tattered AWANA book beside me, and a pile of stuffed animals on my lap. The stuffed animals were my two year old's response to the tears. The tears were my response to the AWANA book. Or more specifically, my response to other people's responses to my response to the AWANA book. Didja get all that? There was a time when I was only mildly wary of AWANA. (Sidenote, I'm gonna just call it Awana from here on out, because all that capitalizing is getting tedious.) Back when Thing One was an adorable little Sparkie, I bought him a book and a vest with absolutely no idea what it all entailed. It was like a foreign language or a secret club. To be honest, it wasn't that I was particularly interested in getting him into Awana. That's just what you do with your kids in our church. They hit kindergarten, you enter them in Awana. I didn't think it through. I didn't really investigate it at all. Just did ...