Parenting

Yesterday I was sharing with a young mom who has difficulty in her life. Her question? How can she protect her son from this pain?

We have a general rule of thumb here at our home: share the truth. As parents, we are often aware of the pain of life’s circumstances. When our personal lives are touched, as they will be, do we expose our children to the pain or shield them? How much? When? How?

It must begin here: you yourself must find grace for the situation and exercise faith in it. You must. Then you can let that grace and faith overflow into their young lives. But if you don’t obtain that faith and grace yourselves, you have nothing to share with them. Dig in and find what He has promised. It is yours; it is theirs as well.

Find it in His Word, experience it in His presence as you worship Him, release your doubts and fears in honest prayer and receive His comfort, repent of sin and wrong responses to such difficulties in your life. Do it. Refuse to accept anything less than faith and grace for every difficult situation you encounter. As your children watch you dealing with hard things this way, they learn a wonderful process. They will know what to do when they are thrust into turbulent waters of their own.

But if you hide your struggles you will also have hidden your findings. If you shield them from every bump and difficulty they will fail to experience His grace along the way; His word will not have been applied and faith will not have been exercised. Exposing them, with your care and support, will teach them all these things.

Sickness, financial loss, relational struggles (yours and theirs), the reality of brokenness in a family member, discussing the damage of sin, death — these things will confront all of us at some point in time. We can try to hide our children from them in an attempt to be their shield of protection, or we can recognize Him as the only perfect shield and teach them how to obtain His grace in these challenging situations. He is our true protection, our real victory, the only genuine help in time of trouble.

Beware that you do not become their source of protection, their help. You can never handle it all, nor will you always be available. And I doubt that any of us would claim to be enough.

In preparation for adulthood, children take babysteps, stumbling and falling many times, getting bruised along the way. But would we prevent those babysteps in an attempt to spare them the bruise? Never. We know that babysteps, with all the unavoidable bruises, are the means to independent movement. Soon they are walking, running, handling steps, and even jumping hurdles. We must release them to this, not fearing the bumps and scrapes along the way.

So it is with their spiritual growth. Let them face hard times. God is able to use it in their lives as well as in yours. Bumps in life are a reality. We cannot keep them in a bubble of a perfect world, nor should we. Call a spade a spade; call sin sin; acknowledge hard times when they come. Teach them what the Word says about the reality of this fallen world. Show them how to find what God’s answer is, learning principles from His Word and applying them in creative ways to each situation.

If you try to create a perfect world, they will learn to love this life and the things in it. I’m not saying to teach them to be negative. Anyone who knows me knows that I am fairly positive. My epitaph will probably read:

Here lies Darlene Sinclair. She had fun!

By all means, discover the beauty of His grace. Understand and appreciate the wonders of His passing creation as just that — passing wonders. Heaven is more abundant than even this! I can hardly wait!

But recognize with them, too, that there are difficulties, and that we, as children of the Most High God, have access to the throne of grace, the everlasting fountain of grace. These are learning days, days of growth, days of experience with you as their guide. Don’t cheat them, don’t provide false protection. Let them experience Him as their great shield and protector, let them know Him as Father, as perfect parent and guardian. Help them discover truth, apply truth, repent, appropriate, and function in strength and health.

Theirs is a great and wonderful portion because He is their portion, as well as yours — even now, while they are young. He is theirs to trust in and draw from. Release them to their source of great grace today. He will not fail them — ever.