Overhearing the conversation is the wife's elderly mother who also lives with the family.  Though Martin's character thinks the elder woman to have already slipped around the bend she proves by what she says that she is more aware and wiser than he had credited her with being.   Let's listen in:

Wife to husband: "What do you want me to give you? These kids are not appliances.  Life is messy."
Husband to wife: "I hate messy.  It's so . . . messy!"
Grandmother: "You know, when I was nineteen, grandpa took me on a roller coaster.  Up, down.  Up, down.  Oh, what a ride!"
Husband to grandmother: (sarcastically, as if to say, "what in the world does this have to do with anything that matters?") "What a great story!"
Grandmother: "I always wanted to go again.  You know, it was just interesting to me that a ride could make me so frightened, so scared, so sick, so, so excited and so thrilled altogether.  Some didn't like it.  They went on the merry-go-round.  That just goes around.   Nothing.  I like the roller coaster. You get more out of it."

Needless to say, it was the grandmother's way of saying that those who don't want messy or scary and who want life to remain as predictable as possible should never become parents.  There is no experience in God's creation that takes all the fears and the joys and heartaches and the pleasures of life and rolls them up, literally in a bundle, like being a parent.

As I've shared with you before and what those of you who are parents already know, the first time you hold the child born to you life is never again the same. All of your priorities, your values and even all of your dreams are suddenly rearranged or at least refocused by that sometimes messy little bundle squirming between your wrist and your elbow.  And, you have this strange sensation somewhere in your midsection that you have just begun a new journey to which there will be no end as long as God gives you breath.

A journey, oddly enough, filled with guilt.  There has never been an experience in life that has created a greater sense of guilt for me on a daily basis than being a parent.  Before our children were born, if we failed or sinned, we mostly bore the pain of the guilt alone.  Sometimes our spouses would, too.  But, at least spouses are adults and have some capacity for processing the pain others inflict on them.  But when your child is nothing but the innocent victim of your selfishness or stupidity or sinfulness then there is no more painful guilt than knowing you have, by your own failures, asked that child to live with the consequences of your choices.

About sixteen years ago I received a phone call late one night at home.  The parent of two students in my youth group was calling.  His son had just run away from home after beating up his younger sister.  Would I come?  Of course, I dropped everything and made my way to their house and the father brought the daughter into the living room.  He was an emotional mess not only because his daughter had been beaten to a bloody pulp but also because he had no idea where his son had gone when he disappeared into the dark night.  The daughter was confused and very hurt and I was just as lost as to what to how to help.

Somewhere, however, in all my efforts to help and comfort I apparently said the wrong thing.  The next thing I knew the father had taken me by the left arm and I found myself being physically carried across the room and on outside where I was summarily thrown off the front porch.  For the first time I appreciated how policemen, often trying to intervene in helpful ways in situations of family violence, often find themselves on the receiving end of some of it themselves.  I have never in my life been as shaken as I was that night.

The next morning, trying to sort it all out, I shared my experience with an older minister.  And, he said something I've never forgotten.  He said that there is nothing in life that grieves a parent more than watching his own children mirror for him his own weaknesses and inabilities.  Most likely, whatever else was going on that night in that family, that father was watching his children mimic his own propensity to violence as a way of solving problems and the guilt of it all was eating him alive.  Whatever I said had apparently touched that raw nerve of guilt and I found myself flying off the front porch.

In countless ways every day every parent sees and hears herself or himself in the behaviors of her or his children.  Though it can be fun and joyful, it can also be very frightening and rife with guilt.

For parents dealing with guilt over their failures as parents, though they can and should commit themselves to personal growth and maturity and getting professsional help if necessary, ultimately, there is only one way of hope.  "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God - not the result of works, so that no one may boast.  For we are what he has made us . . .."

Though my children are becoming each day more and more responsible for their own choices and behaviors, if you watch them closely enough, you will see them mimicking the failings of those who raise them.  (By the way, thank you for not watching them too closely.  Thank you for letting my sons just be Griffin and Cameron and not the preacher's kids.  They are so much more than that and I am grateful beyond words for a church family that recognizes that.)  Nonetheless, guilt at my personal failures is a part of my daily emotional diet.

Here is what the grace of God means as expressed in the passage I quoted above from Ephesians 2:8-9.  Salvation is not just our deliverance from an eternal hell.  The salvation of God is active in our lives here and now.   Therefore, what our Heavenly Father is up to in our children's lives, through His grace expressed to them in Christ, will not only determine their ultimate fate in eternity but even have the prevailing influence in their lives now.

It is not our failures as their human parents, as devastating as that can be, that will have the final say in the lives of our children but the fact that God has created them for what is ultimately good.  As we lead our children to faith in their saviour, Jesus Christ, we lead them to the only hope for dealing with our fears over the impact of our humanity frailty.

And, what a part fear plays in being a parent!  You just thought you were scared when you were little and wondered about the things that went bump in the night.  There is no fear quite like the anxiety over the well being of those little ones you love enough to die for, especially when they get old enough to go bumping out into the night on their own.  Fear for their physical safety.  Fear for their spiritual well being.  Fear for the pain that will come to them from which we cannot and should not shelter them.  Fear at every turn.  Yet, you know, I've come to something as I've observed parents who seem to do parenting well.  One of the worst things one can do is parent out of fear.  Unresolved fear, like unresolved guilt, has a way of manipulating families into some very unhealthy ways of living that tend to become, quite literally, self-fulfilling prophecies.

Fear leads parents to push their children academically, socially, athletically and even financially into patterns of living for which God never created them. Pushing them out of fear that, if they do not achieve, they will not be worthy.

And, strangely, such hard-driven parental obsession tends to send the child the message that only through achievement are they of worth.  So, at the first failure, there is nothing but despair left as a recourse.  And, one ought to be careful about leading their children to despair.  It has been said, "Be kind to your children.  They choose your nursing home."

When all is said and done, failure is a terribly underrated experience.  I like the wisdom of one parent who, when asked his secret for raising such wonderful children said that his mantra to them was, "don't flunk failure."  Failure is a course in which we all must enroll.  The best adults are those who began learning, in childhood, to make straight "A's" in failure by learning everything they could from every experience with it.

The best parents I know are those who have taught their children, by example and by challenge, not to fear failure.  Tragically, however, some parents are so afraid of their children ever failing that they insulate them from every risky experience and, tragically, from the character that only wrestling with their personal shortcomings can bring.

So, sure, I fear Griffin or Cameron ever coming home with a ring in their nose. But, if they ever do, after yanking it out, I will have a long talk with them about what pain can teach them.  O.K.  Let me tell you what I've really decided.  Whether my sons ever come home with a ring in their nose or pink paint in their hair I think I will learn to live with that as long they leave home with Jesus in their hearts.  "Let the little children come to me; do not stop them;"   Jesus said, "for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs."

The greatest thing, perhaps the only thing, you can do for your child that will ever finally resolve your fears for them is to bring them to Jesus.  Jesus loves all the children of the world, for sure.  That means your children, too.  There is a place reserved uniquely for them in His arms.

An Arkansas pastor who had once worked recruiting missionaries for what used to be the Home Mission Board once told the story of the turning point moment in his parenting.  He was gone from home all the time.  But, one day when he was home, his little girl climbed into his lap and showed him a picture of her family she had drawn at school.  Her mom and her brother and sister were in the picture. But, this pastor noticed he was not.  When he asked his little girl why he was not his little girl said, "Oh, I forgot."

It cut his heart out and he wept.  The next day he went to work and told his supervisor that, at whatever cost, he had to rearrange his priorities.  Said he, "I've got to change my routine if not my job.  I've got to get back into my family's picture."

One of the most spiritual and truly holy things some parents could do is have that same conversation with their employer tomorrow morning even at the risk of losing their job.  In the vernacular of scripture itself it would be legitimate to ask, "What does it profit a man if he keeps his job and the car and house and prestige that come with it but loses his own place in the family picture?"

Having said that, however, let me tell you what I am now beginning to find gives me even more hope beyond my presence in my family's picture.  I want to be in the family picture until the day I die.  I never want my boys to be able to think of family without thinking of me front and center there.  Someday, however, that picture will be nothing more than a framed and fading image in a hallway.

By death, if nothing else, I'll someday be gone.  What really gives me hope is in knowing that, by bringing them to Christ, God, their Father, will always be in their family picture, front and center.  Do whatever you must to honor Christ's challenge to bring your children to Him.  If you don't know how let someone help you.  Only in Christ is there relief from parental fear.

Only in Him can you give them hope beyond what you can do for them.  And, true Christian hope is not wishful thinking.  True hope is the confident and absolute knowledge that our Heavenly Father keeps His promise to give the Kingdom to those who trust Him as only a child can.

So, beyond the guilt and fear of it all, is hope.  A hope that has led me to pray a prayer for my children I once only prayed for myself.  I think you'll recognize it.  You may want to make it your own.

"The Lord is my sons' shepherd.  They shall not want.  He will make my sons lie down in green pastures; He will lead them beside quiet waters.  He will restore their souls.  He is guiding them in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake.  Even though my sons will someday walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for them; for their Father in Heaven will be with them even there.  His rod and staff will comfort them.  He will prepare a feast for them even in the presence of those who would seek to harm them.  He will anoint their heads with healing oil.  Their cup will surely overflow.  Surely goodness and mercy will follow my sons all the days of their lives, and they will dwell in the house of the Lord forever."  Amen.