Ping.
In an instant the peace of sitting alone at the table after a day definitely not for myself was disrupted. Mom-hat back on, radar up as I read the text in the screen shot above.
The message coming from my child who I had already sat alongside earlier in the day to resolve conflict with a friend and another mom. The outcome, a reinforced reminder of why living redemptively is worth it! But really more drama already?!?
This – when only an hour before another one of my children had a meltdown in my car. It had been a bad day after a long week. So the culminating cry was not unexpected or easy to console.
My only other child is relatively drama-free. It’s tempting to think a child like that makes for easier parenting, but I really don’t think so. The thing with the non-emotional, unexpressive ones is you never know what is going on inside their heads. At least the other two tell me how they feel so I have something to go on. Without any information, the assumption is things are fine when it may be far from it.
But, with our kids who are more sensitive, experiencing deeply the emotional ups and downs, there is no way to remain unaffected. At least I don’t think so as a mom. When they hurt, we hurt. When we can’t fix their hurts, it hurts worse. When their hurt lasts, it takes an emotional toll on us.
So when my child says, “I kinda feel like cryin” or has maybe already shed so many tears there is nothing left, it might as well be me because I kinds feel like cryin’ too. So what does it look like to live broken alongside them? How do we navigate not knowing how to help, or even being able to change their circumstances?
First and foremost, God’s grace and lots of prayer. I don’t mean that as cliche, I say it because there is nothing like parenting through the valleys to show us so clearly our need for wisdom and strength outside of ourselves.
Our tendency is to want to rescue, but the more we try to control and fix what we can’t, the more we heap pressure onto our kids that they must get it together. So instead of leading them to find rest in Jesus in all seasons, we lead them to pretend being better. And, we feel falsely secure over a problem supposedly solved. But if they really aren’t okay, what we are teaching them is to stuff their emotions and to be more like the stoic child whose harder to know.
In hurrying them back to being happy and not hurting we mean well. But isn’t it also because we don’t want to hurt?
It’s hard to be stretched and left indefinitely in a position of not knowing what to do. Yet sometimes there are no immediate answers and circumstances aren’t going to change overnight. But we live in a culture that expects to exist as if everything is perfect, so when things are not we can’t be okay with how it really is.
What if though living out of our brokenness and need is where God has them – and us? What if living as light means staying in darkness, temporarily? What if his goodness for us requires coming to the end of ourselves?
Can we live there?
By God’s grace we will learn to be content there. We will stop trying to control and instead just enter in. Because the best thing we can do for our children in their struggles and pain is simply identify. Afterall, we know what it’s like to feel sad, lonely, mistreated, hurt, overwhelmed and disappointed so let’s give them the freedom (and ourselves the same freedom) to live in those emotions and not always rush them to be okay.
At the same time in that process let’s direct them to the One who knows and identifies with us in all these things. The One who came in flesh to experience all that we do so he could enter in as our Savior-friend.
“But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” 2 Corinthians 12:9, 10
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” 2 Corinthians 1:3-4
