The Grace Gift of Parenting & Life
Welcome to 2021! A new year filled to overflowing with God's promises for new life, blessings, deliverance, and victory has come! May God's grace be a vital part of our every moment. Love & prayers from our home to you, Abundance House Blog The following post was first published 10/16/19.
Parenting wisdom informs us our children will misunderstand and see life differently than we do as they grow and mature. We parents are adequately cautioned about this. We are frequently cautioned that due to our child's individual personality, no matter how careful we are, there will be things our children won't see as we intended and meant them to be seen. There will be conversations that won't be heard as they were spoken. Our children can't see our thoughts and hearts. They don't know the great love that is the foundation for every thing we do and say. Parents know this. We are told not to be alarmed because this is a standard part of parenthood. Nothing, however, prepares you for how intensely this unveiling of your beloved child's reality affects you. Nothing.
Just as we parents grow in understanding and experience, so do our children. The way our children see the people and experiences in their childhood also changes as they age, exactly like it does for us. However, living through our children's revelations concerning their own childhood and hearing their perspective of the childhood we were responsible for providing for them isn't easy, no matter how aware of the challenges of parenting we are.
Listening while a grown child relates an experience so vastly different from the lovingly secure childhood we labored so intensely for them to have can be nothing short of brutal. As a child's words pour forth, the chasm between the childhood our child actually lived and the one we were so very deliberate and intentional to give them widens into a gaping wound. A wound, that if left untended, can bore its way through the center of a parent's heart.
It isn't that being misunderstood is a bad experience so much as it contains the potential of delivering an indescribably intense emotional punch to one of the most vulnerable, delicate areas of our beings: our great love for our children. The impact of this punch can be especially potent when said parent isn't any too confident they've walked the season of parenting well. Honestly, what parent is completely confident they've parented well? Every parent knows, or will know, in and of themselves they are wholly inadequate to raise a good human being. Any good that exists in their child exists solely by the grace of God.
And that brings us right back to the very beginning of it all, the grace of God. Every season. Every morning. Every night. Every high. Every low. Every mountain. Every valley. Every sunrise. Every sunset. Every childhood. Every lifetime lived. Everything. Always. By the grace of God.
"It is by grace we have been saved, through faith, and that not of ourselves. It is the gift of God lest any man should boast." (Ephesians 2:8)
If our eternal salvation is by grace, how much more will our daily life experiences also be saved by grace through faith? Because of God's grace even the most difficult seasons of childhood and parenting are a gift of God. It is God's grace that heals the wounded hearts of both parent and child. By grace through faith. It is the gift of God. A great and wonderful gift never to be taken or lost. A gift none of us deserve and cannot earn. Life. A gift. A treasured, wonderful gift. May each of us accept God's wondrous gift of grace.