parenting

Growing Up: Part 5 (The Elder Stage)

March 8, 2010 by Edwin Crozier Leave a Comment

I recently read a very interesting book that provided an intriguing look at growing up, maturing (wait for it…wait for it… yes, here it is, an associate link: The Life Model: Living from the heart Jesus gave you). In the past few Mondays, as we looked at God’s way for our individual lives, I’ve been sharing some of what I learned from this book. I’ve already looked at the infant stage, the child stage, the adult stage and the parent stage of maturity. Today, let’s look at the elder stage (beginning when the youngest child has become an adult).

The Elder Stage

While we always continue to mature, this is the highest level of maturity shared by the authors of The Life Model. We need to remember that just because someone’s children have become adults, doesn’t mean they automatically enter this elder stage of maturity. Sadly, some may have biologically raised children to adulthood but still be children themselves. This is simply the authors’ marker for when this stage can begin.

True elders are comfortable in their own skin. They act like themselves in the midst of difficulty. They don’t check the winds of change, putting their finger to the air, to see how they need to act and react. They have become comfortable with who God has made them to be, with their actions, their reactions, their responses. They are also comfortable helping their community grow based on its God-given identity, not trying to force on the community what the elder wants it to be. They see the value and potential in all others, helping them accomplish their reach their potential and goals. Elders are able to look past the flaws and facades of others to see what God has designed them to be.

Elders do not simply parent their own children, they work to parent the community. “They can handle criticism and rejection, speak the truth even when it is not easy or popular, serve without being appreciated, encourage needed growth and change, delight in younger people’s skill and power, and place what is best for the community over personal fairness and preference” (p. 23).

Finally, true elders recognize that those with struggling biological families need a spiritual family. They need a spiritual family to help them heal, grow, and thrive. These elders are willing to give the nurture and care needed in these situations treating these “spiritual adoptees” with the same care they would their own biological children.

Maturity Tasks of the Elder

According to the authors, there are four tasks for the elders to accomplish as they continue to grow within the community.

Elders establish an accurate community identity and act like themselves in the midst of difficulty.
Elders prize each community member, and enjoy the true self in each individual.
Elders parent and mature the community.
Elders give life to those without a family through spiritual adoption (p. 33).

The elders accomplish these tasks as the community responds in the following ways, respectively.

The community recognizes elders within the community.
The community provides opportunities for elders to be involved with those in all of the other maturity stages.
The community creates a structure to help the elders do their job, which allows people at every stage of maturity to interact properly with those in other stages, and listen to the wisdom of maturity.
The community places a high value on being a spiritual family to those with no family (p. 33).

When Elders Fail

If elders fail to accomplish these maturity tasks, the community suffers. There is disorder. There is meaninglessness. There is lack of direction for the community. The community will begin to disintegrate at every level. When elders fail to prize and value each member of the community, life-giving interactions diminish. At-risk, hurting, and struggling people fail to heal and survive. Interdependence within the community is stunted, and thus, the community’s growth is stunted. When true elders don’t lead, parenting the community properly, unqualified people do, resulting in immaturity across the community. When true elders do not parent and adopt those whose biological families are not sufficient, poverty, violence, crisis, crime, and mental disorders increase. Obviously, when those whose biological parents aren’t bringing them to maturity have no one who mentors them, they simply won’t mature.

Seeing the sad prospect of a community without qualified and true elders helps us understand the sad statement made by the authors: “Sadly, most in our culture never make it to this level of maturity. This is unfortunate because the success of any country, community, school or church body will have a direct correlation to the presence of true elders who are guiding and advising” (p. 23). In other words, when elders fail to fulfill their tasks, the community fails to grow to maturity as a whole.

The Spiritual Application

I think the spiritual application at this level is abundantly clear. Churches need elders. Without true and qualified elders, churches cannot mature and grow. Without men who will parent and grow the brethren within the congregation, the congregation will be stunted. Look at churches across the nation. What is the real problem going on within so many? Do they not have elders because they are small? Or are they small because they don’t have true elders?

I can’t help but think of Ezekiel 34:2-10. God was bringing judgment upon Judah because her shepherds weren’t shepherding. The flock had disintegrated and was scattered across the mountains. This was written within the context of the Babylonian captivity. Babylon was destroying Judah and it was because there weren’t true elders guiding that nation. I find Ezekiel 34:10 very interesting. God was delivering Judah up to captivity, but He called it a deliverance from these awful shepherds who had dealt so poorly with Judah.

God has given qualifications for elders within His communities (I Timothy 3:1-7; Titus 1:5-9). Without getting in depth with these qualifications, I think we can all see that the essence of these lists says God wants mature Christians to be elders within His churches. If we want more true shepherds in our congregations, then more of us have to work on spiritual maturity. We have to start by first being disciples, surrendering our lives to God. We have to begin with personal growth. If no one matures, then there will be no elders and eventually there will be no churches. Oh, sure there will be groups that call themselves churches, but they will not be what God wants. Eventually, as He did with the seven churches of Asia, He will judge the churches and remove their lampstand.

Concluding the Series

I spoke with one friend who said he was reading this series, but then got depressed and had to quit. I can completely understand that. As I read The Life Model, I became quite discouraged. As I’ve thought more about maturing, I see more clearly how far I have to grow. That can seem overwhelming. However, I’ve begun to emotionally grasp another concept that is helping me. Time is not my enemy. Time is my friend. I don’t have to be at the elder level of maturity by the weekend. I just need to grow some more between now and then. I can grow a little today. Then tomorrow, I’ll grow a little more. And the next day. And the next. In God’s good time, if I continue to grow in Him, He’ll mature me.

Let’s keep growing together.

Be Careful When Blogging About Your Family

February 23, 2010 by Edwin Crozier Leave a Comment

This week, I have to offer an apology. I guess I thought my 10-year-old son wouldn’t get around to reading my blog ever and so last week wasn’t too worried about using our great moment as an example. I’m still thankful for the example we got to share, but I apparently embarrassed my son. I don’t ever want to do that.

So, I encourage you to learn from my mistake and be really, really careful when you use your family as an example. The best bet is to get permission first.

Anyway, to Ethan:

Thank you for reading my blog.

Thank you for being willing to share your emotions with me.

I’m sorry for embarrassing you. I hope you can forgive me.

Growing Up: Part 4 (The Parent Stage)

February 22, 2010 by Edwin Crozier Leave a Comment

I recently read a very interesting book that provided an intriguing look at growing up, maturing (wait for it…wait for it… yes, here it is, an associate link: The Life Model: Living from the heart Jesus gave you). In the past few Mondays, as we looked at God’s way for our individual lives, I’ve been sharing some of what I learned from this book. I’ve already looked at the infant stage, the child stage and the adult stage of maturity. Today, let’s look at the parent stage (birth of 1st child until youngest child is an adult).

The Parent Stage

This is where I begin to really get a bit worried about me. The Life Model begins this section by saying, “Biologically being a parent does not automatically put you at the parent stage of maturity. In fact, many parents are not at this level. You know that you are at the parent stage, however, when you can sacrificially care for your children without resenting the sacrifice or expecting to receive anything for your efforts. You may feel exhausted or overwhelmed at times, but you still will be able to appreciate, not begrudge, your sacrifice” (p. 22).

This presents a problem for many in our society. We often have an entitlement mindset. We are entitled to our fun, our recreation, our plans, our goals. Having children shouldn’t get in the way of any of that. This becomes even more apparent since more and more people are becoming parents biologically because they thought they were entitled to the pleasures of sex without being impacted by its natural consequences. Too many of us parents think we are entitled to keep doing everything we were doing when we were simply independent adults (biologically) and should never be asked to sacrifice anything, neither time, money, effort, recreation, social activities, or goals.

Having said all of that, I love these two sentences in the book: “Parenting does involve sacrifice, but it is not about giving up who you are. It is about becoming who you are!” (p. 22).

4 Tasks for Parents

There are four tasks parents must learn to accomplish if they will grow to the elder stage of maturity.

Parents must learn to protect, serve, and enjoy their families.
Parents must learn to take care of their children without expecting to be taken care of by the children in return.
Parents must learn to allow and provide spiritual parents and siblings for their children.
Parents must learn how to bring their children through difficult times and return them to joy from other emotions (p. 32).

Maturing parents will quickly learn that accomplishing these tasks requires support from a community and guidance from other parents who have already matured and walked this path ahead of us. We alone cannot provide all that our children will need as they mature into adults. If we are wise we will bring other people into our children’s lives to help as spiritual parents and siblings. We’ll rely on shepherds in the church. We’ll rely on other mature safe parents. We’ll rely on extended family. We’ll rely on others who can, along with us, help our children mature and grow.

The essence of parenting is striving to represent God to our families. We need to learn to act as God acts. Love as God loves. Teach as God teaches. Discipline as God disciplines. Help as God helps. When we can accomplish this, we are ready to move into the final stage of maturity.

We accomplish these tasks as the community and extended family provide the following four supports:

The community gives both parents the opportunity to sacrificially contribute to their family.
The community promotes devoted parenting.
The community encourages relationships between children and extended spiritual family members.
The community supports parent by giving them encouragement, guidance, breaks, and opportunities to recharge (p. 32).

When Parents Don’t Mature

When parents don’t mature to protect, serve, enjoy their families, the family members are at risk, deprived, and feel worthless or unimportant. Further, this lack of care for the children often calls on the children to care for the parents. Some call this parentifying the children. Sadly, we commonly see these parentified children as mature beyond their years. However, in the long run it usually stunts their emotional maturity. It is a form of emotional abuse. Of course, it make maturity really difficult to accomplish because this troubled person is pretty sure they are mature and will hardly listen to any ideas to the contrary.

When parents won’t bring in trusted members of the community to help mature and develop their children, the children can become vulnerable to peer pressure, cults, and misfortune. Further, the parents themselves can get completely overwhelmed. It is not more mature to try to parent our children completely on our own. Both parents and children need to the support of the community around us. Further, if we don’t learn to bring our children back to joy, they can get lost in their sadness, depressed and despairing. The family units begin to disintegrate because there is no joy and peace to connect them with each other.

The Spiritual Application

Think about our church community. Are we providing what our parents need to mature themselves and help their children mature. I can’t help but think that the community that makes up the church is rarely trying to accomplish this. Instead, the community is relying on the organization of the church to do this. It is not really Christians helping Christians but a church organized plan. There may be mother’s day out programs, there may be extensive youth groups, there may be sermons preached, but are the members of the community really reaching out to have these interactive relationships with each other and provide the community that is really needed to help us all mature. It seems to me that the quick and easy solution so many churches are looking to is only carrying on the problem. Like the parentified child, we can hardly see how we are not really accomplishing the maturity that we want.

We don’t need church organized programs to accomplish this. What we need is Christians getting involved with each other. We need mature parents taking maturing parents under their wings. We need elders setting the example. We need shepherds guiding the sheep in the flock, not merely administering the business of the fold. We need personal sacrifice of time, money, effort, etc. Look at the community of the very first church in Acts 2-6. These people sacrificed for each other. They cared for each other. They didn’t establish church programs, youth groups, mothers-day-outs, nursery schools. The members took care of each other.

We need parents to be humble and lean on God by leaning on the brethren God has given them. We need children to not simply be age-segregated off into groups of age-based peers. We need the older to teach the younger. We need to introduce our children to questioning, learning, and mentoring by other mature Christians. Perhaps we need the same thing.

Of course, if we’re still not even at the adult level of maturity, we need to back up and grow or we’ll never be able to parent. Let’s be honest with ourselves about this growth and become responsible for our maturity.

Make sure you come back next week for the final installment of this look at maturity as presented in The Life Model: Living from the heart Jesus gave you

Weep with Your Children Who Weep

February 16, 2010 by Edwin Crozier 6 Comments

Last night was an all-time high for me. I was faced with a choice and I think I made the right one. We attempted to go to the movies on Valentines day. It was absolutely packed. We left. So, yesterday I told the boys I would take them to the movies, just them and Dad. It was going to be great. That is, until we got in the car and started to head north to Franklin and discovered the snow had started to stick and was making the roads very slippery. It was coming down torrentially (can snow come in torrents or is that just rain). I was sure it would be much worse in three hours when it came time to come home. So we just made the loop and went back home.

Ethan, who really wanted to see this movie, having already read the book, was crushed. Two days in a row of getting his hopes up and then getting them dashed at the last possible moment was just more than his ten-year-old psyche could handle. He started crying.

Now, my selfish, hardnosed self wanted to say, “Buck up. Don’t you realize this is small potatoes? Don’t you understand that we’ll see the movie later? Quit crying.” But God must have been doing for me what I can’t do for myself. In that moment, I remembered Romans 12:15, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” It doesn’t say tell the weeping that what upsets them is unimportant. It doesn’t say simply try to cheer them up. It doesn’t say discount why they are weeping. It doesn’t say tell them to stop weeping or tell them to buck up. It says weep with those who weep. With that verse in mind I tried to understand what it must be like to have your heart set on something and two days in a row have it come crashing down. It may not be a big deal to me, but it is to him. I tried to think of some scenario in which I would be just as disappointed and sad. I can think of the time I was going to get to see all my friends from Beaumont after doing some preaching in Houston but a hurricane came through and we were all fleeing for our lives. I was extremely sad. I remember being crushed. It was nobody’s fault, that’s just the way it was, but I was so upset about it.

When we got home, I took Ethan to my room, sat in the lazyboy we have up there, and just held him as he cried. I’m very glad that my son feels safe enough with me to let his emotions show. I’m very glad that he was willing to let me hold him and console him. We were able to talk about how life is just disappointing sometimes and its okay to be sad. He then wanted to go see his mom and I let him.

That was a victory for me. I hope the next time one of my children cry, I can have the same Romans 12:15 mindset.

Play with Your Kids While There’s Still Snow

February 9, 2010 by Edwin Crozier 2 Comments

I almost made a huge mistake last night.

Supper was just about finished. I was tired. I didn’t feel like doing anything. I definitely didn’t feel like getting out in the cold or cleaning up the mess if the kids got out. A friend called and said, “Have you looked outside?” I was stunned. Seemingly out of nowhere snow was falling the size of quarters and half-dollars and it was sticking. Already, there was a layer of snow worthy of operation snowball.

Then came the near fatal mistake. I almost said, “This will be great to play in tomorrow. Let’s eat and then get going to bed. You’ll have fun tomorrow.” But something caught and I decided to let the kids have their fun. I told them they could go play and simply reheat their dinner when they were ready to eat. After I ate my dinner, Trina (the two-year-old) asked if she could go outside. My initial thought was, “No, that will mean I have to go outside too.” However, I was out of town last week and thought some impromptu play time with the kids would be good. We had a terrific snowball fight. Tessa and Ethan took on Ryan and me. Of course, we trounced them, though Ethan and Tessa did get a few good shots in.

Why would putting off the fun until today have been a fatal mistake? I was certain there would be time to play today in the snow. Usually it gets colder over night. Yet, when we woke up this morning, there was only the slightest hint that it had snowed. If I had pushed it off until today, we wouldn’t have been able to play in that snow at all.

Here’s the lesson. If there’s snow right now, go play in it with your kids. You just never know what tomorrow will bring. Putting that time off until tomorrow may mean you miss out on it completely.

Of course, I hope you understand this isn’t just about playing in the snow. (By the way, can you hear the strains of “Cat’s in the Cradle” playing in the background?)

Maybe it will snow enough today that I’ll get to play with my kids again when I get home tonight. I hope so.

Have a great day and even if it isn’t snowing where you are, do something with your kids today. You may not have the opportunity tomorrow.

Find Out What’s Really Going On Before You Discipline Your Kids

January 19, 2010 by Edwin Crozier 3 Comments

kid in corner by Ken Wilcox I had another great reminder the other day that my initial reaction to a situation may not be the right one. I need to press a pause button before I simply lay into one of my kids with a disciplinary measure.

Marita was rightly upset with Ethan. He had been disrespectful and disobedient. I was at the office when all this took place, but if I understand it correctly, Marita was in a hurry to gather the kids together to get to a doctor’s appointment for Tessa. They had all gone to what we call “book club.” It’s a homeschool group we’re part of in which the kids of different ages get to read books together and do different learning projects based on the books. Two of our neighbors host it. Marita, Tessa, and Ethan were at one house, Ryan was at the neighbor’s house.

When it came time to go, they were leaving early, Marita sent Ethan to get Ryan from the other house. Ethan pitched a fit, acted rebelliously, caused a scene, and had various other problems. Let’s face it, I don’t care what the reason is behind this, this behavior is wrong. Discipline needs to take place. My problem is I often simply jump to the discipline without trying to figure out what is really going on. Because I don’t figure out what is really going on, the discipline doesn’t actually work. It just produces bitterness.

I guess on this day, God was doing for me what I can’t do for myself. When Marita told me what happened and asked me to deal with Ethan, instead of getting wrapped up in embarrassment that he had this scene in front of other people, I stepped back and wondered why my normally obedient son pitched this major fit. So, before disciplining I asked him, “What was that about? Why did you do that?”

The reason is he knew they were in a hurry and he had wanted to drop by our house to get a book to take with them to the doctor so he wouldn’t be bored. He thought if he took the time to go get Ryan, he wouldn’t have time to go to the house. So, he was afraid and angry. He expressed that fear and anger with a fit.

Please understand this. I’m not going all Dr. Spock on you. We don’t need to look at this situation and say, “Oh, Ethan was just expressing himself. That’s okay.” He was expressing himself incorrectly and inappropriately and that cannot be allowed to continue. However, if all I had done was say, “You’re not allowed to act like that,” and spanked or grounded him, we wouldn’t have actually dealt with the real issue. The real issue is he had some fear and some anger and he needed to learn how to express that. Even more so, he had a desire that he needed to learn how to express. If I had simply disciplined him for the improper behavior, all he would have learned is, “I don’t get to want things. I don’t get to tell people what I want or need. I’m not ever allowed to be upset about something. What’s going on inside me is wrong, bad, and unimportant.” In my experience, these are dangerous lessons to learn.

Instead, we were able to discuss the appropriate ways to talk to his mom (or me) about his needs and desires. We were able to discuss the appropriate ways to share what his fears and angers are. We have a plan in our family to deal with this event and Ethan had forgotten it. If we ever ask our children to do something and they believe they are aware of something we aren’t or they have an idea that might be different they are allowed to respectfully say, “May I please make an appeal?”

So, in this situation it would have sounded something like this:

Marita says, “It’s time to go. We’re in a hurry. Ethan, run up to the neighbor’s house and get Ryan.”

Ethan is upset because he thinks this means he won’t be able to get his book out of the house before they leave, so he’ll be bored, stuck in the doctor’s office with nothing to do. He responds, “Mom, I’d be happy to do that, but can I please make an appeal?”

“What is it, Ethan?”

“I really don’t want to be bored at the doctor so I wanted to get my book from home. Can I please run to the house and get my book and let Tessa go get Ryan?”

To which Marita would have responded, “Don’t worry, Ethan. Go get Ryan, we’re all going to stop at the house before we leave.”

Of course, Ethan is 10. The conversation wouldn’t have been perfectly like that and I don’t expect him to memorize a catechism of proper responses to his parents. But it would have been a whole lot better than slamming doors, kicking things, yelling, and making a scene.

So, I was able to spend a few minutes with Ethan talking about how to respond in that kind of situation. I was able to talk to him about how to let his wants be known by talking about them instead of expressing them through manipulative displays of frustrated emotion. We were also able to talk about the fact that sometimes things don’t work out the way we want. It’s okay to be disappointed and upset, but it is not appropriate to take that out on people by rebellion, meanness, antagonism. He might make the appeal and Marita end up saying, “No.” In those moments, he needs to learn to express his emotion in productive, not destructive, ways.

This whole situation reminded me that before I simply respond to an action with a discipline. I need to back up and find out what is really going on. Otherwise, the discipline isn’t going to do any good. I did well that day. I’ve blown it multiple times since then. Today, I plan to be on top of my game. We’ll see.