Parenting: Embrace the Chaos
"And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." -- Genesis 1:2 (KJV)
My best piece of parenting advice is “embrace the chaos.” In Genesis, God creates the universe out of nothing. The Hebrew word for "void" is closer to our English word chaos. God fully understands what we're going through.
Having been blessed with a grandchild, I see firsthand the stressors parents of younger children are placed under. Cultural change has injected new problems into the educational system creating topics we never even dreamed of facing.
All we worried about was getting homework done and limiting use of the Nintendo video gaming system.
But when you short-circuit because a child won’t obey, anger happens. You want to react as the calm parent and explain things in a soft voice to a rational child. The problem is the child isn't rational. So you raise your voice and yell those famous words, “because I told you to!”
Modern pressures to raise children are enormous. Just housing, feeding, clothing, taking them to church, and educating them are enough, besides all the extras such as music lessons or athletics.
Life is too short to let anger rule over you.
The best-behaved children I ever met weren’t ours. We needed a specialty contractor for the house, but as a single custodial parent, he needed to bring his kids along because they were on a break. This was fine since I work from home. I learned his wife had divorced him for another woman, and at the time, was changing her gender identity.
Talk about chaos.
I asked how he’d dealt with that. A devout Christian, he’d dealt with the situation by diving deeper into Jesus. He found a good church. He determined his main goal was to teach his kids to be like Christ. He homeschooled them. They said grace over lunches he'd packed and then he had a short Bible study with them, too.
His work had paid off. Those kids glowed with the Holy Spirit, and conversed beyond their years on a variety of subjects. And talk about polite and helpful! This dad embraced the chaos by seeking and holding on to Jesus even tighter.
A good example for us all.
"You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you." -- Isaiah 26.3 (ESV)
Questions for Reflection:
1. When was a time as a parent you felt completely out of control?
2. What was your response?
3. Are there things you need to change or let go of to help your stress?
