God's Way Works

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God's Way for Our Family

When I Remember My Own Weaknesses, I Can Be Gentle with My Family

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Today’s Bible reading over at giveattentiontoreading.com really hit me about how I deal with my family.

The verse that really got me was Hebrews 5:2, “He can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is beset with weakness.” The Hebrew writer was talking about the Old Covenant priests who had to offer sacrifices for themselves as well as for the people. They could deal gently with others because they recognize their own weaknesses.

That hit me regarding my preaching and relationships with brethren. But it also made me think about my wife and kids. It really struck me that usually I’m most harsh with my wife and kids if they are making a mistake I have made. I think in some ways I can get really harsh because I can trick myself into thinking I’m better than I am. If I come down really hard on them about the issue that means I’m not soft on the issue with them and really I have a good handle on it. I can make myself feel better than them by really letting them have it.

Interestingly, the Bible says my own weaknesses should have the exact opposite affect. Instead of my weaknesses making me more harsh with my family, they ought to help me address my family with gentleness.

This is especially true with my children. How often I see them make my mistakes and out of the noble desire to protect them from the consequences I’ve had to face I start getting mean, harsh, controlling, and even manipulative. In my mind, it is about protecting and preserving them. That seems noble enough. One of the things I’m learning is that when I’m mean, harsh, or controlling, I usually just push my kids to keep making the same mistakes. When I approach them with gentleness, recognizing my own weaknesses, even leading with my weaknesses, that seems to help them a whole lot more.

I’m making a personal commitment today. Before I start getting on to my kids for anything, I want to first think about my own weaknesses. I want to remember that I am beset with weakness. That way, when I deal with their weaknesses, I can do so with the proper spirit.

Have a great week and remember that God’s way works with our families.

Edwin

Rite of Passage Parenting

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As is often the case after I spend a week with parents I think are doing a better job than me, I have loaded up on parental encouragement in the form of books. Thank you Half Price Bookstore. I’ve come across one that I think is going to revolutionize my thinking about my job as Dad and my expectations of my children.

The book is Rite of Passage Parenting: Four Essential Experiences to Equip Your Kids for Life* by Walker Moore. Our job as parents is to bring up our children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4). Bring them up, that is, lead them to maturity and adulthood. Moore suggests our American culture has lost four essentials to help bring our children up to that maturity.

  1. Rite of Passage
  2. Significant Tasks
  3. Logical Consequences
  4. Grace Deposits

I haven’t finished the book yet, but I’ve read enough to be excited about its promise and if the book falls flat in delivering good advice the mere concept has opened my eyes to a better way to work with my kids. Sometimes I think he is over the top with his satirical humor (perhaps the result of working as a youth minister–one can tend to forget that in writing a book for parents he no longer has to shoot from the hip with excessive humor). Additionally, some of his illustrations fall flat for me because of the difference in perspective on things like prom. However, I’m getting a great deal out of this book and I look forward to telling you all about it when I’m finished.

Today, I thought I would simply throw out the concept and leave you with a passage from the book to whet your appetite.

Walton’s Mountain Revisited

While I was growing up, my parents used to make us sit through (back then, it seemed more like “suffer through”) a television show called The Waltons. Each week the show reached us throug the vision and voice of John-Boy, the eldest son of John and Olivia Walton. John-Boy worked with his dad on a farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains and helped him run the sawmill.

Today, this show might be considered politically incorrect. For instance, John and Olivia actually expected John-Boy to work–planting corn, feeding livestock, and chopping wood. He and his six siblings had to do their chores in order for the family to survive. You would never hear his dad say, “You know what? We ought to let our kids be kids. They’ll grow up soon enough.”

If The Waltons had been written about our modern-day family, the show would look very different. First of all, no one would expect John-Boy to help his family. While his dad tried to keep the farm going, John-Boy would sit in his room, playing video games. His sole responsibilities would consist of making his bed and taking out the trash. He could only accomplish these tasks, of course, with tremendous whining, complaining, and snorting like a bull poised for attack.

If the contemporary John and Olivia ever dared to let John-Boy go outside, he would certainly have to be covered from head to toe in protective gear. Can you see our modern-day John-Boy coming out to chop wood? He would have a helmet–not just any old helmet, but one that had passed all the government safety ratings. He would don protective eyewear, elbow pads, and safety shoes with reinforced steel toes. His parents would make sure he had a rope tying the axe handle to his wrist. That way, if he let the ax slip, it wouldn’t go very far. It would have a safety shield covering its head so John-Boy wouldn’t accidentally cut himself. Of course, it would also come with a safety DVD so he could learn which end was sharp and how he should always keep it point away from his face. Finally, the ax would come shrink-wrapped in clear plastic–the kind that even a nuclear blast can’t break free.

I’m sure you get the idea of where this is going. I can’t wait to learn more about helping my children become adults. I’ll share with you what I learn as we’re going along.

*This post does contain affiliate links. Hey, I’m trying to help you with your parenting. Why don’t you help me with mine, click the link, buy a book, help my kids. Here’s another chance.

That’s Life: A Video Perspective

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I thought this video gave some interesting perspective on life and especially family life. I’m not sure I agree with its final perspective, unless there the guy is switching to talk about spiritual life through Jesus. But the video was fun to watch so I thought I’d share.

E-mail subscribers can click here to watch the video.

Don’t Just Say “I’m Sorry;” Take Responsibility

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Let’s face it, we are people in our families. That means we mess up. We make mistakes. We sin against each other. We do wrong. When that is the case, what should we do next?

Apologize.

But let me encourage you to do more than simply say I’m sorry. It is so easy to say, “I’m sorry,” and not consider what we mean. For what are we sorry? Are we sorry we got caught? Are we sorry they didn’t like what we did? Are we sorry if it upset them? Are we sorry they are mad at us?

Instead of justing saying, “I’m sorry,” take personal responsibility. Consider some other things you can say that really drive home what you ought to be meaning:

  1. “What I did was wrong.”
  2. “I had no right to do what I did.”
  3. “There is no justification for the way I acted.”
  4. “I shouldn’t have done that, I won’t do that again.”

You get the idea that this is more than just rolling off a trite phrase. This is about recognizing we did something wrong no matter how the person we are apologizing to has acted.

Further, if we have done wrong, we have driven a wedge in the relationship and it needs to be reconciled. But that can only happen if the person you wronged is willing to offer you mercy. Therefore, don’t just say, “I’m sorry.” Ask them to reconcile the relationship. “Will you forgive me?”

But remember two things about this. First, when you are asking for forgiveness you are saying you sinned. You didn’t just make a mistake. You didn’t just flub up. You sinned. Therefore, asking for forgiveness must not become another trite phrase to just try to cover up what you did. Second, you are asking for mercy. You can’t ask for forgiveness and then demand it be done. If the person owed it to you, then it wouldn’t be mercy.

“Oh, but Edwin,” someone cries, “God commands that they forgive me.” It is true that God’s children are called to forgive. But that is something they owe God. It is not something they owe you. You are not the one to get to make that demand on them. They don’t owe you anything.

Is there anything in any of your family relationships that has driven a wedge between you? Why not step up to the plate, take your personal responsibility, apologize for your wrong, and seek forgiveness. Don’t get distracted by what they did to you, clean up your side of the street.

Give Your Family Unconditional Love

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I’m glad I’m reading The Secret of Staying in Love* by John Powell. These are lessons I need to grasp. Even though he doesn’t reference Bible verses, I believe his point is biblical. This is an excerpt from his chapter “Human Needs and the Experience of Love” about unconditional love. This is the kind of love we need to develop for spouses, children, and parents.

thesis three: effective love is unconditional

Love may be given either conditionally or unconditionally. There is no other possibility. Either I attach conditions to my love or I do not. I would like to say at this point that only unconditional love can effect change in the life of the person to whom that love is offered.

In his work, Conceptions of Modern Psychiatry, from which we took our working definition of love, Dr. Sullivan talks of the “quiet miracle of developing the capacity of love.” He describes being loved as the source of this miracle. The first impulse to change, he says, comes not so much from being challenged as from being loved. Only in an atmosphere of unconditionally offered love will the human barriers to relationships be lowered.

There is a story of a housewife who related that her husband’s love seemed to be conditioned on her keeping the house tidy and in order at all times. She maintained that she needed to know that he loved her whether the house was cleaned up or not, in order to have the strength to keep the house clean. If you understand and agree with what she is saying, you understand the point being made here. The only kind of love that helps us change and grow is unconditional.

Conditional love always degenerates into pan-scale love. Both parties are expected, in pan-scale love, to put a donation into the proper pan so that a perfect balance is achieved. But sooner or later some tension, some pain, some struggle will distract one of the pan-scale lovers, and he will not make his monthly payment on time. So conditional lover #2, refusing to be swindled, removes part of his contribution in order to be sure that more isn’t going out than coming in–until nothing is left but emotional or legal divorce.

There is another question, and it is not so simple. Can we expect one party in a love relationship to continue making an unconditional contribution and commitment of love without a sustaining response from the other? Theoretically, I believe that if a person could continue offering an unconditional love, the other would in time respond. But perhaps it would be too late. If the person trying to offer unconditional love is given nothing in response, to nourish his own capacity and renew his strength for love, the relationship may be brought to an inevitable failure.

In practice I think this possibility is claimed far more than it actually occurs. People renege on their love commitments, run off to divorce courts, and take to falling in love all over again (with somebody else), without ever challenging their personal resources, developing their ingenuity, or testing their coping mechanism. It has been said that love works if we will work at it. I think that this is true, and I think that fidelity will always be the measure and test of human love.

Footnote: “Unconditional love” should be interpreted as an ideal, a goal towards which true love aspires, but which is realistically not within human reach or attainment. We are all to some extent injured, limited by the throb of our own needs and pains. Only a totally unscarred and free person could consistently give unconditional love. Such a person, of course, does not exist.

*Yes, that was an affiliate link. By now, you probably assumed that. Here is another one to make it easier for you to buy a copy of Powell’s book.

Sing a Song to Your Kids

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I just have to share because I rarely come up with a great idea that seems to work so well. Last week I came up with a song to sing to my 2-year-old, Trina. It is now her song and she asks me to sing it all the time. It is not a big thing, but I encourage you to try it with your kids. Get creative, take some time.

I’m now working on songs for the other kids. But, since they’re older, I’m not sure they would appreciate me sharing the songs online, however, they seem to like the idea of having their own little song that I sing to them–at least the boys do.

Here’s Trina’s. It is to the tune of “I’m a Little Teapot.” By the way, just a word of explanation, somewhere along the way, Trina received the nickname, “Trina Bean.” That has led to all sorts of variations. String bean, Trin Bean, Trina Beansprout. Don’t ask me how Marita landed on that last one, I don’t know. But it stuck and that is why it is in this song.

You’re my Trina beansprout, cute and sweet.
Here is your nosey, here are your feet.
You’re huggable and kissable, you’re so neat.
Time with you is such a treat.

As I’m sure you’ve guessed, I pinch her nose, tickle her feet, hug and kiss her at the appropriate times. It is now part of our nightly ritual and I sing it throughout the day. She loves it and I believe it lets her know how much I love her.

I encourage you to turn on your creative juices and find a special song for each of your special children. Even if they are a little older, you may be surprised how much they appreciate it (even if they won’t let on).

One caveat, if your kids are older, you may want to keep the song between you and them. They probably won’t feel so special if you sing it to them in front of their best friends.

Have a great week and may God bless your family,

ELC

PS: I’ll throw this in for free. If you live in Indiana, take your kids to Turkey Run. Rocky Hollow, the Punch Bowl, Boulder Canyon, and the ladders are just too good to miss. The picture with today’s post was taken there yesterday. As you can see, my little Trina Beansprout is just about conked out. Yet, she never did go to sleep. We’d hit a bump and she would jump up, “I’m awake! I’m awake, Daddy!” “Okay sweetie, go back to sleep.”