Best Parents (before we had kids)

Monte always says "we were the best parents before we had kids!"  He is right...we were.  We knew it all.  Once we had kids we realized it wasn't as easy as it appeared.  Now that we have five kids we judge no one.  Being parents is hard but more than that it is a reward from our heavenly father.  God uses our children daily to make us better people and to shape us but it isn't for the faint of heart.  We have learned how to love deeper than we knew existed.  We have gotten a glimpse of the love that our God feels for us.  We ache and often cry out in frustration when our children make poor choices or behave in unacceptable ways.  God feels our pain and knows the love of a parent because He is our Heavenly Father.  He feels that same love and same agony when we disobey him.  Perfection is not achievable when it comes to parenting and we cannot make our children behave no matter how hard we try to mold them into what we want them to be.  God can but he chooses not to.  He chooses to let us make our choices and learn from them.  He uses our choices good or bad to make us better.   God is always there to love us and guide us through this world but in the end we, just like our children, have the choice to obey and come to Him. 

When our oldest were younger, we spent a lot of time trying to figure this parenting thing out.  We found a specific author that we thought seemed very practical in their approach and used many of the techniques to no avail.  We later learned that this author writing about raising children had none of their own but instead a PHD in Psychology.  We can read every parenting book out there Christian or not but we look for answers in vain.  We need to look no further than our Heavenly Father and His Word.  He is not asking us to do anything that He hasnt' done himself.  He is after all the Heavenly Father to the most unruly children in history!  Now that has to count for something.  When our children disobey we need to think about what God would want us to do and dive head first into his Word.  How would we want Him to handle our disobedience and how can we use our mistakes (and our children's) for His Glory?

I write this because I want to work on parenting more intentionally. I need to let go and allow my children to experience the consequences of choices and quit telling them how it is (my family is smiling because they know that I am good at this).  They will learn much more through life with my guidance than with my pushing.  I need to be more quiet so that they can come to me when they are ready to listen instead of shoving what I want them to hear down their little ears.  It is soooo tempting to tell them I told you so when they come to the realization that mommy and daddy were right all along.  But, if I do, they will stop coming.   Just like our Heavenly Father...I want them to come.

 He replied, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.”

Luke 11:28