Parents, do not exasperate!

The talk this morning in church was on parenting, and how to not "exasperate your children" so that they then go and do unwise and rebellious things in reaction. I mused that it's so easy to parent with the Ghost of Christmas Past. We parent, by and large, instinctively. That is to say, we parent the way we were parented unless we make a concerted effort otherwise. It's not a deliberate thing. The way your parents raised you is the method that you know, and therefore your default setting. Without the least intention in the world, your mouth opens and you hear your mom's (or your dad's) words coming out, and they sound right and proper because they are so familiar. Familiar things are so comforting! Well, they are to us, but unless you had parents of gold I guarantee that they aren't nearly as comforting to our offspring.

Mind you, I'm not saying I had really horrible parents, but like everybody else they had their parental faults, and they passed those faults unerringly along to me. I have to struggle HARD sometimes to seal my lips and not say some of the more damaging things that I was told. Most parents lean either to the side of grace or the side of truth, and neither of those in extreme are good. The best path is down the middle, and it's so dreadfully hard a path to see, because most of us never had a map of that particular road. So we go mindlessly along, blithely traveling the road which looks familiar, even though we know darned well it leads right off a cliff. My own parents veered a little heavily toward truth (or at least truth as they saw it) and so in response I have often veered a little too far towards grace.

So what's the fix? Here's the bad news--there isn't one. We will always struggle--always--as long as we and our children walk the same earth. But here's the good news--there is help, and its very large help. As Christians, we are new creatures in Christ, and as new creations we can do a new thing. It isn't enough to hear my own words and be appalled and wonder what deep pit they came from. The new thing is to parent with the Holy Spirit by my side. Parenting must be done mindfully and prayerfully. If I find I am NOT struggling, then I know I have a problem. There's really no excuse for doing as you were done to. While I don't want to turn this into a sermon, because I am no wise a great and wonderful parent, I am living testimony that bathing situations and decisions in prayer and supplication makes a great deal of difference, and constantly watching what I do and evaluating the effects with painful honesty has made a difference too. But I can't do it alone. I need God, every single day, doing it with me, reigning in my instincts. Often times just recognizing that phrase before it leaves my mouth, and tasting how it formed me when I heard it the first time, is enough to keep it inside, and change it to something more helpful.

But I don't do this alone--God is raising my awareness all the time. He does it because He loves me--and He loves my children even more than I do. Even more than I want it, God wants me to train up my children the way they should go, and wants me to do it while inflicting minimal damage. I need to daily cast off the Ghost of Christmas Past and do a new thing. Hallelujah! He makes it possible.

Love, Spud.