I’ve been feeling an unexpected, if not undesired, kinship with my man Moses lately.
Remember when Moses comes down the mountain to the all-out idol-worshipping party of 2 million people (who God just brought out of Egypt and is about to give the Ten Commandments)? Moses loses it and breaks the stone tablets in half.
Somehow this seems like a super-amplified version of a parent, say, coming home to a kegger and stomping on a teen’s phone.
Which by God’s kindness has not in any way happened here at Casa de la Breitenstein. But let’s just say parenting encounters eyebrow-raising moments, yes? Moments where a godly parent might desire to throw a tablet of some form or another?
After the Golden Calf Debacle in Exodus 32, I imagine Moses is feeling the hard when he approaches God in a key passage in chapter 33.
Moses said to the Lord, “See, you say to me, ‘Bring up this people,’ but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found favor in my sight.’ Now therefore, if I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people.” (vv. 12-13)
He gets kids acting stupid
The rest of this passage carries so much richness. But just sayin’: I think Moses gets parents whose kids act stupid (can I say that word on this blog?) and don’t change very quickly.
I hear in his plea with God, Please, Lord. These people are your heritage. Your wisdom, your change, are the only forces that can make this happen.
And just maybe, Help me with these boneheads you’ve given me.
(I don’t just think I am projecting, but it’s possible.)
Looking at the history of Israel with God in the rest of the Old Testament? I think God gets it, too. Check out His words right before this to Moses:
Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.
As a parent of sometimes stubborn kids, I think, Um, yes. I understand your fury here, Lord.
So I’m thinking about change, and how it happens, and what happens when parenting feels like two steps forward, sixty-three steps back.
Here’s what I’m chewing on.
Lasting change is often slow.
Yes, God’s completely capable of miracles in our kids. But in nature, in our kids’ physical growth, in our own souls–He seems to favor growth that’s barely perceptible. Each day, our kids grow about 1/365th of how they’ll grow that year.
And honestly? That’s how a lot of genuine change happens.
It’s God orchestrating (and our kids choosing) opportunities for growth and building essential muscles for growth. Think of a hatchling pecking its way out of an egg. (Guessing I’m not the only one whose parent told them not to help the duckling out of its shell.)
Sometimes our kids need to walk all the way through their issues so change will last–like the prodigal son, who needed to go to a “distant land” and starve to the point he was eating with the pigs (check out Luke 15:13-20).
For more on this idea, check out Do We Want Our Teens to Just Make the Right Choice?
Remember your own story.
I appreciated this author’s reminder to me that I wasn’t half-dead when God found me. I was all the way dead (Ephesians 2:1-3).
Sometimes when I can’t picture God changing someone, I may not be completely aware of just how much God has saved and changed me. And is still changing me.
Your kids are not what they do.
As someone who launched a parenting book a few weeks ago, and as an achiever who’s dedicated so much of my life to my kids (homeschooling for years, discipling my kids with intentionality, raising them in Africa)–I really, really have a hard time not finding my own identity in my kids.
And that’s extremely dangerous.
My kids aren’t made to carry the weight of my identity, my sense of worth. That would make them idols. Only God can fill those sucking holes in me.
But if I’m not careful with my heart in that way? When my kids fail, which they do in their own crash-and-burn moments–it’s hard for me not to circle the drain.
You’re Being Lied To
It’s tempting for any of us to believe some core identity lies (identified by Henri Nouwen):
- I am what I do,
- what others think of me, and/or
- what I have (respect, family, popularity, control, academic honor).
But these lies aren’t true for our kids. And they aren’t true for us.
God gives us unchanging, solid value, saying
- Jesus has done enough. (2 Corinthians 3:4-6, 5:21, Hebrews 10:14)
- God accepts us because of Jesus. (Romans 5:1, 8, John 1:12, 6:37)
- He gives us everything we need. (2 Corinthians 9:8, 12:9, Philippians 4:12-13, 19)
Building our identity on the hot air–and fluctuating levels–of our kids’ success isn’t enough to sustain the weight of our attention, our focus, our identity, our fear, our worship.
(If you’re interested in more on this concept, don’t miss Beating Up Elvira: Self-talk, Identity, & the Enemy Stalking Your Brain.)
This is your chance.
The Bible Project’s podcast episode The Loyal Love of God reminded me of God’s hesed love–this steadfast, loyal, generous, merciful love characteristic of God throughout Scripture (think of his love as told through the story of Hosea). Now that I know it’s about 250 times in the Old Testament, I see it everywhere.
But it was news to me that Scripture tells of people who had this same kind of love. And when is that steadfast, God-like love most tested?
In pain, in suffering. When those we’re loving are being unlovable. Or loving gets hard and long. And when people disappoint us or need forgiveness or patience.
Loving our kids through ugly, betraying, gut-you-like-a-fish moments are your chance to show them, and the world, and yourself, God’s steadfast love without an exit strategy.
This kind of love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Corinthians 13:8). And that’s whether your kid snaps at you, or acts like an entitled jerk, or can’t find his way back to God right now.
Hesed is opposite of the spirit of our age, which says we have to act on our feelings. Hesed says, “No, you act on your commitments. The feelings will follow.” Love like this is unbalanced, uneven. There is nothing fair about this kind of love. But commitment-love lies at the heart of Christianity. It is Jesus’s love for us at the cross, and it is to be our love for one another.
Miller, Paul E. A Loving Life: In a World of Broken Relationships
Stubborn Love
Even though sin makes our kids stiff-necked, I like the idea that God displays a far more stubborn, fierce love.
He responds to Moses’ plea that He will, in fact, go with Israel to the Promised Land: “This very thing that you have spoken I will do, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name.”
As parents, God knows us by name–and He willingly responds to us. As Steffany Grezinger sings,
You’re not struggling to hear me
So I’m not striving to be heard
I am sure the One who made me
Is catching every word
As you wait on change–remember that those who wait on him are never, ever put to shame (Psalm 25:1). Keep on waiting. There is hope.
