His Timing is Perfect!!!!

Today's post is for all you moms and soon to be moms out there.    It seems to me that there is nothing else that is more humbling, character refining/sanctifying, exhausting, draining, frustrating, mentally challenging, physically challenging, tear filled, and heart wrenching as parenting.  Yes, there are times when there is great reward in being a mom!!!  Like when you gaze into the fixed gaze of your infants eyes, or watch your baby peacefully sleep.  Or when your preschooler sings songs about how much they love you!  Or they wrap their little or big arms around you and say thanks mom!  When they do what you told them to do, and when they make you feel proud.  But those moments are not the whole story are they...in the day to day thick of it I have often found myself exasperated as a parent.

Over the years I have read many parenting books and each time I had come a way with a new sense of how far I myself and my children fell short.  I then would come under a great sense of condemnation and shame.  Trying to regroup I'd gather up my skirts so to speak and determine to do better as a parent.  The funny thing is that what that determination produced in me was not being a better parent and having better kiddo's but a more angrier, frustrated parent who was desperately trying to get her kiddo's to perform as they ought.  When they would not conform to my ideals of how a child ought to behave or perform I would become angrier.  Then my children too would become angrier and we became stuck in a vicious cycle that we all desperately wanted out.  The problem was I had no idea how to get out of it.  

Then one day in the midst of this vicious cycle the Lord spoke to my heart:  "The problem here is you!  You have unrealistic expectations of both you and your children.  If you would just stop, pray and ask me what is needed I will show you."  So began a slow journey of change in my heart and in my parenting.  My home became less contentious and I was more at peace!  I was beginning to appropriate grace into my parenting and point my kiddo's to their need of a Savior when they disobeyed.  I look back with sadness as I admit to you that with each kiddo I grew a little more in my understanding of what that looked like.  So that my first born there was little to none taught and modeled to him, to my second born a little bit more, my third a tiny more, my step daughters (when we became family) a tiny bit more, and to the last a bit more.  This makes me sad because of course I wish I would have known what I know now with my first born!!!  I can't however go back and change things, I can only seek forgiveness and move forward.

One of the first books that influenced me as I sought to appropriate grace in my parenting more was Shepherding a Child's Heart.  I highly recommend this book to you mom's who are out there in the thick of it.

I have a long way to go yet and though I have been parenting for 25 years I still have much to learn.  Recently, the Lord has convicted me that I have wrongly conveyed and taught my children a legalistic view of life.  Oh, I don't mean intentionally I did this.  Heavens no!  This was completely unintentional and the realization took me by surprise!!!  My first inclinations came to me when I realized I never told my children the "why" we "do" or "don't do" certain things I just demanded they conform.   Then the realization of my error really began to dawn on me this Christmas.  My husband Jeff and I and four of our children were visiting with family at my husbands parents house.  Our youngest son who is 5 was playing with his cousin who had taken a toy or something like that (memory is a bit fuzzy here).  My husband was trying to get my son to forgive his cousin.  This 5 year old boy of mine was protesting with great frustration that he could not!  He just was not feeling it!!!  My husband persisted and so did my son!  As I watched my husband and little boy for the first time instead of feeling angry or incensed that he would not apologize I began to understand.  It began to dawn on me that he could not because his heart was hard!  He was a sinner who needed His Savior to transform his heart so that he could forgive.  His dad did what I would have done before this new revelation had begun to take root in my mind and heart, he sent him into isolation until he could say he could forgive.  With this new revelation I went to my son and I gently said  "Zachary, you know what?  You are right!  You cannot forgive your cousin on your own, you need Jesus to help you!"  We then prayed together that Jesus would forgive Zachary for his lack of forgiveness and help him to be able to forgive.  Later on that night my son was able to forgive his cousin.

Wow!  I thought, how come I never knew this before!  How come I missed this!  I was taking Christianity and making it into a bunch of rules that my children needed to follow, but that is not what it is about at all is it?!  How can it be that we moms and dads know that we are sinners who need a savior to set us free from our sin and that He alone can empower us to overcome sin, but then we make or insist that our children obey our rules in their own strength?  We expect obedience and demand it from then!  What is the result do you think?  Well, most likely we will either end up with Pharisees (law keepers whose hearts are proud because they keep all the rules and so, are far from God) or Prodigals (law breakers...hearts overwhelmed and hardened by all the rules and so rebel).  Of course I do not discount the grace of God!!!  His grace can reach through all of our failures as parents to the heart of the child no matter how bad or good (it's never good enough) we parented!!!

So where does that leave me?  Prostrate on the floor before my Savior repentant for my sin!  Seeking forgiveness from my children for conveying the wrong message of the cross to them!!!  And starting fresh with this new revelation that God so graciously allowed me to learn now!  Every day is a new day and in His grace I begin a new!  I need grace just like my kiddo's...I need it so I can parent as I ought and I need it when I don't!  I can then trust that as often as I blow it as a mom is as often as I can go to the Cross again with my sin.  "And He said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Cor. 12:9)

It also means that I as a mom can be proactive and find resources to help me put into action what I have now learned.   What is incredibly mind blowing crazy to me is how perfect God's timing is!!!  Just as I am learning how to parent in a grace filled way He had recently taught the very same thing but with greater depth to two beautiful Christian women Elyse Fitzpatrick and her daughter Jessica Thompson.  They then took what they learned and put it in a book titled Give Them Grace: Dazzling Your Kids with the Love of Jesus.   I have yet to read this book because it just came out, but it is on my wish list!  I highly recommend that whether or not you get the book that you listen to Elyse Fitzpatrick's interview on the Desiring God website here: DG LIVE with Elyse Fitzpatrick  I was startled when Elyse Fitzpatrick in this interview shared a very similar story as mine (shared above) about her daughter learning how to teach about "grace" and the need for it with one of her own children.  Watch and you will see what I mean. 

Oh, and one more thing that is an important reminder for all of us.  No matter how good we parent our children they may still end up prodigals!  And the opposite is true!  No matter how bad we mess up as parents our children may choose to follow Christ!  The Authors of this book clearly state their book is not a how to get your children saved but a how to dazzle them with the love of Jesus!  The rest is the job of the Holy Spirit!!!  Jesus is the Author and finisher of our faith and Lord willing our children's!!!  We mom's are not!!!

What about you? How have you parented?  What has or is God teaching you today?  I'd love to hear your story too!!!  If you get the book and read it then let me know what you think!