Parenting is Tension

There is a war that goes on inside of me in all facets of life, a tension between good and evil...of right and wrong...of Spirit and Flesh.  It's hard.  It's brutal.  I've found that the area I become most aware of this battle in myself is with my children.  They have their inner battle as well and sometimes it clashes with mine, and it clashes HARD!

The kicker is, it doesn't even have to be over big things.  In fact, it is commonly over a build up of the small things.  The defiant "NO" over dinner, coming out of the kitchen and finding one of my three-year-olds on our dining room table unscrewing the light bulbs out of the light fixture, the pee accident during the nap time, coming downstairs when my daughter takes too long to get her new underwear after the accident to find her having opened my Amazon package and messing with my TV remote, the sibling squabble over a blue stuffed teddy bear...it's the little things today.  The little things that mounted into honestly not wanting to be around my kids or liking my kids today.  I admit it.  I really don't care to be around my kids today.

Of course, I put my big girl pants on and put dinner together amidst what felt like a million "MOM!" calls today.  But I was curt, I was short, I was generally annoyed.  I got to the point of seeing absolutely nothing good about my kids.  When I realized I was spiraling, I went to the same questions and doubts that reside in the hearts of many moms.  Am I a good mom?  My kids don't mean to be so terrible, is this all my fault?  If I parented better, they wouldn't be able to get up on tables without me noticing, right?!  Am I failing my kids?  I just need space from the insanity!  I don't want to wound their sinful hearts with my own sin!  Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!  I'm angry at them.  I'm angry at myself.  I get angry with life and just want to run away and hide.

My children would not be "rising up to call me blessed" today.  Jeez Louise.

But then I think of something I heard from Paul David Tripp once.  He says that God is committed to our process...our process of becoming more like Him.  It takes time, it doesn't happen overnight.  That process is where grace meets our lives.  It meets us when our pain and sin are the deepest and the most real.  One of my most raw places where God meets me is in the tension of the battle in my parenting.  I have NO idea what I'm doing.  I try to be consistent and kind, but it's days like today when I feel like I'm going to lose my mind where I remember how much I really don't have it together.

These kids were designed for me and me for them.  In our flaw and in our strengths.  They will bring out sin in me that I wasn't even aware that I had.  They push me outside of my comfort zone.  They lie to me.  They try to cheat, steal and do all the things they want to do in their innate selfishness.  I did not have to teach them how to be bad, they have that all down pat on their own.  But, then again, so do I.  It doesn't take work for me to be selfish, lazy or not engaged.  It comes naturally to me to want to take the road of least resistance, to drop consistency because it is inconvenient, to just want to get mad over "sin management" in the situation, rather than helping my child examine their own hearts in many situations...because it's WORK!  Sometimes I don't want to do the hard stuff because I want to just do me.  I want to have my space, my time and not be bothered.

This tension between loving my children, needing some time and space, lack of self-awareness when trying to overcome negative emotions, between knowing what I should do and actually doing it is the most raw and real for me in parenting.  It has exposed a level of weakness and anger in myself that I wasn't even aware was there.  A level of frustration exists in me that brings me to my knees before my Savior.  I have come to find that not only will God expose the sin weakness in my children to me, but it is so apparent to me that it's seemingly equally that God will expose my own sin weaknesses to me about myself through these children.  They can make my typically calm, level-headed self disappear faster than I am aware of its disappearance.  My agitation is ignited, at times, at lightning speed in ways no other human can provoke me.

My own sin grieves me today.  Yes, I know my children are sinful and, yes, I do correct and train them as best and consistently as I can.  But I find when I come to the end of tough times like this, that I'm upset and disappointed more in myself than in them.  I have to own my sin.  These tensions that arise as a parent are chances for me to reflect, grow in my knowledge of my own inclinations and be able to apologize to my young children.  They are accountable for their own sin, but I am accountable for mine as well.  They are not the source of my anger and irritation, my own sinful nature is.  While it is NOT a sin to feel angry, agitated, overwhelmed, etc. it is those emotions that open the door to sinful thought processes and actions.  I alone am accountable for these things.  I am first and foremost accountable to God for them, even before my family.  Repentance first belongs to him alone, but then I must own my mistakes, even to my small children.  I should not have yelled at them for asking me simple questions just because I was agitated.  I should not have just sent them to the other room just because I told them to "buzz off and give me my space" although not in those exact words.  While space is good and inappropriate behavior is not good on their part, I'm accountable for my visceral reactions.  Period. 

And they need to hear from me that mommy makes mistakes too.  Mommy has apologized to God first, and has come to them to ask for forgiveness too.  This is God's grace in the middle of tension.  It's all of our brokenness as a family (in the little and big things), kneeling before the cross of Christ and admitting once again how desperately we need him.  If we are left to our own devices, we will fail. 

When my children see reconciliation in the middle of brokenness and mistakes, THAT IS THE GOSPEL LIVED OUT IN FRONT OF THEM.  This is what Christ did for us.  He came down into the gook of my mistakes and yours, not with a shaking finger, but with a manger and a cross.  He did for us what we could not do for ourselves.  He restored the relationship.  He is my example of what to do in these broken spaces.  I am to embody what he has already done at Calvary.  The work of reconciliation is part of their big process and part of mine.  God is dedicated to our process of becoming more like him.  I want to be dedicated to me own process AND theirs.  Forgiveness and reconciliation not only need to be taught, but lived out.  I am called tonight to do this with my kids and I will be called to do it again and again.  I need not fear this process but embrace this chance to live the Gospel in the wake of my mistakes and theirs.  We are all in this together.