We are in the final weeks of 2021, and our team is getting ready for a much needed break. As my teenager says, “I’m not gonna lie…” (I always think, well good 😊), but this has been a long, hard year. When we turned the calendar from 2020 to 2021, I remember taking a deep breath and thinking, We have seen the worst, and life is going to get better. Boy, was I naïve. This year was hard in so many ways. My family chose Romans 15:4 as our family verse for 2021.
For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope.
Romans 15:4
We could not have been more spot-on had we tried. When God laid this verse on our hearts, He knew the challenges we would face, but also the sweet moments we would experience. I find there is no greater hope than the encouragement we find in Scripture.
I reached out to our Family Ministries team and Parenting Pathway team and asked them to answer any of five questions that applied to their life, family, and/or ministry this year. The answers below are a conglomeration of their responses. My prayer is that you will resonate with many of the same lessons and know you are not alone on the parenting journey.
- What have you learned about yourself, or your parenting?
- What have you learned from your kids?
- What did you read that moved you/changed you?
- What was new and excited you, or what was old and hard to work through?
- What Scripture did you meditate on this year, and how did it impact you?
In 2021, we launched adult children to the world but also opened our doors to returning adult children. We sent kids to college, we made decisions to homeschool our littles, and decisions to send some back to public school. We watched our kids struggle with consequences of bad decisions. We also celebrated the birth of babies, marriages, milestone birthdays, and college, high school ,and even kindergarten graduations.
We learned a few things along the way:
- Parenting adult children is hard. Just when we wanted to do a victory lap, we watched our kids hit a speed bump. It doesn’t matter how old your kids are, when your kids hurt, you hurt! We’ve learned to listen more and give advice only when asked or when we feel very strongly that we should say something. Underline the word strongly, because in general our adult kids want us to butt out! We also learned to be their greatest cheerleaders. Encouragement can go a long way to opening the doors of communications between parents and adult children.
- Transitions are hard. Whether our kids were heading off to college or kindergarten for the first time, we found repeatedly that we missed our kids. So much of our time, energy, and identity is found in our parenting that, when our roles change, we need to allow ourselves the room to grieve the change before moving forward.
- Our pride gets in the way. As a team, we suffered illness, loss, anxiety, and depression this year. Our pride kept us from easily asking for and accepting help. We are so conditioned to minister to others, to give of our time and resources, that when we needed help, we found it hard to accept. While it was humbling to need help, it was also overwhelming to feel the kindness of love and support.
- Parenting is more than keeping them alive. There’s a deep fear of unknowingly screwing our children up in all sorts of complex ways. As they grow, we can see more and more of their humanity, and how each child is unique in their own way. These two things have created a mirror glaring back at us. All of this only sends us into the presence of the only One who has control over anything–our heavenly Father. We have learned more about our absence of control and the power of His. We see our depravity and His holiness.
- To really, truly listen. Each of our kids have their own complex and beautiful way of doing things. And it doesn’t need to match ours. And it doesn’t need to match their friends. Or a celebrity. Or any other person. And when we take the time to help them discover what will help them, instead of rattling off the things we would do in their place, it works out so much better for us both.
- To be a steward of our children. It has never been clearer that each of our children are unique. To know them well is to love them well. This takes time together, one-on-one time with each child regardless of age. Side-by-side, we made a conscious effort to see into the world of our children and were rewarded with new insights.
- The church should be our family’s safe harbor. This year we became more familiar with the work of Dr. Preston Sprinkle. He is the president of the Center for Faith, Sexuality, and Gender and a bestselling author who’s written a dozen books, including People to Be Loved. So often we are stuck on the question of what’s a sin and what’s not a sin, and we overlook families in our congregation who are silently suffering through real pain. We’ve moved away from the idea that sexual orientation is the main problem to be addressed. Our temptations come in many varieties (1 Corinthians 10:13). Instead, we’ve moved toward the idea that the church can be a safe place for those who experience temptations of many kinds and desire to live redeemed lives. We also loved Gay Girl, Good God by Jackie Hill Perry. Her story is all of our stories, in that we need to fully surrender all we are and make Jesus Lord of ALL our life.
- Letting go takes a lifetime. New and exciting AND old and hard to work through for us, regardless of our kids’ age and phase of life, was letting go! During each phase of child-rearing, you let go a little more, and each time it’s hard for parents to work through. However, it’s been new and exciting to learn new things with our free time, to engage more fully with our spouses, and to spend more time with our God.
- Scripture is the foundation of parenting. This year, when I was struggling with a parenting dilemma, a friend told me to look to the Bible for examples of parenting. I thought, Yeah, have you seen those families? They are all a mess. But what we did find was that there were reminders of God’s presence in our lives and the lives of our families. Some of our favorites included: Isaiah 41:10, reminding us of God’s constant presence in our lives; all of 2 Corinthians 5, reminding us what is truly important; and James 1:2-4, reminding us the Word is a LIVING, breathing document and the Holy Spirit is a powerful teacher.
- Parenting starts with prayer. We spent a lot of time praying for our children and yours this year. One of our team members summed up our prayer requests in three simple yet powerful prayers:
- That they will come to a saving faith in Jesus and spend eternity in Heaven.
- That they will own their faith and walk the path that Jesus has for them–not an easy path but one that He is on as their Guide.
- That they will never abandon their faith.
Learning from our kids can be humbling, but if we open our hearts and minds, we can see the world from a very different perspective. Our kids are growing up in a very different world than we did, and although we would like to think they have weathered COVID well, we are years away from knowing the impact of it on their development.
It is easy to see that we have no idea how to parent our kids, but with God’s presence and the grace of our kids, we are learning as we go.
Happy New Year! See you in 2022!
