The Unplanned Moments of Parenting

It's been a rough parenting week...again. Maybe I should start thinking of this as the status quo? I've found myself reflecting on how much I focus on the hard. I'm so quick to list the faults of my offspring, to talk about the ways in which they have pushed my buttons or gone one step too far. I, ashamedly, have twice in the last weeks downloaded on a complete stranger about my frustrations with my child. My heart hurts knowing that I've done this; I've repented, I've sought to be more gentle with the way I speak. I'm such a truthful speaker at times that there's no hiding my heart. And therein lies the problem, my heart.

My heart toward my difficult children is one of hardened selfishness. I'm frustrated and angry at their choices because they make life hard for ME. There is a self-serving agenda here in which I want easy children who make good choices so that my life can be more comfortable. If my daughter would just pull her emotions together and stop melting down in the car, I could listen in peace to that podcast I wanted to check out. If my son would calmly ask for help when the physics of trains not fitting into a small tunnel frustrate him, I could quickly rebuild the track and get back to surfing Facebook (or even cleaning toilets!) If my kids could just accept the transition of leaving one place to go to another more easily, I would be spared the embarrassment of offering consequences that have no effect, bargaining that accomplishes nothing, and ultimately the carrying of a screaming child to a car with a look of frustrated apology to the parents around me. Do you see the focus of my frustrations?

ME. The problem is ME. Parenting is inconvenient. Parenting happens while the water is boiling on the stove and the sauteed garlic and onions are burning so that you can stop and get on eye level with an upset child. Parenting happens when you just want to be in the bathroom by yourself for 5 minutes and you waddle out to the living room with your pants still down to break up the fight that has escalated to screaming. Parenting is putting down the toilet brush, holding your dirty hands together so you don't get bacteria everywhere, and reminding your kid to take another deep breath before speaking unkindly to you. Parenting is dying to self, over and over and over again.

How refining the work of parenting is! We must daily, hourly, momentarily, let go of what we want and do what is best for our children. We must recognize that we don't want them to be perfect, well-behaved children on the outside because then we miss the opportunities to talk about the broken, messed up thoughts brewing on the inside. We must choose their character and their hearts over convenience. We must be twenty minutes late somewhere because we need to make sure everyone was calm enough to continue on to our destination. Parenting is not what we want, at all; it's what they need.

It's what we need too. Jesus instructed that, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me." (Luke 9:23) In John 3, Jesus reminds us that, "He must increase, and I must decrease." We need these little people of ours to show us just how selfish our hearts are. We might think we are dying to ourselves, we might think we are doing a pretty good job of being selfless (I mean, being a parent at all and just taking care of the immediate needs of children requires us to die to ourselves--hello, sleepless nights for crying babies, puking toddlers, and nightmares of elementary school!) We are selfless, as far as we are willing to let ourselves be selfless. We've made up our minds just how selfless we are going to be and then we draw a line. "I'll give up reading this book to make lunches, I won't watch TV so I can sew this Halloween costume, I won't talk on the phone in the car so I can hear about her day, but I WILL shower by myself! That's where I draw the line!" I do this all the time! I list in my head the millions of ways I've been selfless today and I use those to justify just a few more minutes on Facebook before I go in and read with my child.

When I think about my own heart, I realize just how selfish I am. Because if I've made up my mind about when and how I will be selfless, is that even selfless at all? If I've scheduled it in and made room for it, then how much has it really cost me? I think the truth is that the really selfless acts come in the unplanned moments, the moments where I have to stop what I'm doing, change my agenda, and place my eyes on the child in front of me. Some days this feels like the most impossible task I will ever face, especially when I'm changing my agenda for what seems like the 100th time that day!

This is where I found myself praising God this morning in the car! "God I'm so awful at this! God I'm so selfish, but You are not. You give freely, always, whenever I ask. Whenever I demand Your attention because I've faltered again and need more correction and instruction, You stop, You listen and You give. You give freely, selflessly. That is what the cross is all about. That is the God I serve. Thank You for being the perfect parent even when I'm not. Give me a fuller measure of You this day as I parent in the unplanned moments. Help me to see what is most important. Help me to see my child's heart, and give me the willingness to turn towards it, and the words to speak into it. I cannot parent without You. Thank You that I don't have to! Amen."

What freedom we have to know that the perfect parent is parenting us all! I was delighting in creation this morning, delighting in the blue skies and the puffy white clouds, and it hit me--Izzy and Josh are God's creation too! They were created for me to delight, just as much as the clouds and the sky were created for me to enjoy! God created them for me to search them, discover all of the nuggets of beauty hidden within them, and to delight! Praise be to God that I have a lifetime, however long that is, to learn about and delight in my children! Jesus, please don't let me miss the opportunities to stop and delight in the unplanned moments either!

God let the unplanned moments of parenting be a source of joy to me. Teach me to relish them. Teach me to praise You for them. Help me parent my beautiful children as You would. Amen.