Gentleness: Parenting with Grace
I once wandered into a home that was in the process of being restored. I guess you could call it a "fixer-upper," although there was so much to fix, I wasn't sure if it was worth the effort. If it were up to me, I would have hired a wrecking ball and leveled the place, or at least taken a crowbar and ripped down as much as I could as fast as I could.
But not the couple that just bought the property. They were gently restoring the inside from top to bottom, using chisels, hammers, sanding tools, and paintbrushes. It would require a lot of patience, but their gentle touch and project mentality would result in a beautiful home.
If you haven't noticed, your children are not perfect people. There is much work to be done— shaping their character, protecting them from their own foolishness, providing direction when they are lost, and helping them to see the idolatry of their hearts.
As a mom, how will you respond to this divine calling? When your kids lose their way, do you respond with a wrecking-ball attitude of condemnation? When your children chase after idols, are you quick to tear them down with a crowbar vocabulary? Or are you gentle in your response? Do you use soft tools to slowly, painfully, and graciously reveal where they have fallen short?
Mom, what could be more important than this—being one of God's tools to form a human soul?
A Parking Lot Disaster
Let me give you an embarrassing example from my parenting. We had planned a day at a local theme park with our children. I was anticipating a day of familial amusement park bliss. I was hoping that my children would be self-parenting on this day, and if God could throw in a wholly sanctified wife, that would be cool!
We got to the park and were getting out of the van when one of my children said, "Dad, may we have something to drink before we go into the park?" It didn't seem like a dangerous request. I opened the cooler full of soft drinks, and all of my children noticed their favorite can of soda. The problem? There was only one of these cans!
Immediately, a global nuclear war broke out. They were pushing and shoving, grabbing and pulling, throwing ice at one another, saying unkind things, and hitting one another's hands out of the way. I couldn't believe it—we weren't even in the park yet, and my kids had ruined my day! So I jumped in and said, "Do you want to fight? We don't have to pay all this money for you to fight. I'll take you home, put a cooler in the backyard with one can of soda in it, and you can fight forever!" Soon, my children stopped fighting because they saw the crowd gathering to watch me as I lost my cool in the theme park's parking lot.
What was going on at that moment? A God of wonderful, redeeming grace was providing me an opportunity to parent. Pay attention to this line: if your eyes ever see, or your ears ever hear the sin, weakness, rebellion, or failure of your children, it's never an interruption, it's never a hassle—it's always grace. God loves your children; he's placed them with a mother of faith, and in relentless grace, he will reveal their need to you again and again so that you can be his gentle tool of awareness, conviction, repentance, faith, and change.
In that parking lot, God exposed the condition of their hearts to produce concern in me as their father so that I could take advantage of the opportunity to address their sin gently. But I wasn't gentle; I was harsh.
You see, I wasn't upset in that parking lot because my children were sinners. No, I was upset that God exposed their sin, and because he did, I had to forsake my dream agenda for the day and parent them! I wasn't irritated because my children had broken the laws of God's kingdom; I responded with a wrecking ball attitude because they had broken the laws of mine.
And in Paul Tripp's kingdom, there shall be no parenting required of me during a family vacation, or when I am reading my iPad, or after ten o'clock at night!
A Missed Opportunity
Let's break down why I failed to respond with gentleness:
1. I turned a God-given moment of gentle ministry opportunity into a moment of anger.
2. I turned a moment of gentle ministry opportunity into a moment of anger because I personalized what wasn't personal. Before we left for the amusement park that day, my children didn't plot to drive me crazy in the parking lot; it was because of the foolish, lost condition of their hearts.
3. Because I personalized what wasn't personal, I became adversarial in my response. Rather than wanting to minister to my children, what I actually wanted to do was get them out of my way so I could go back to what was engaging me beforehand. My response was not a gentle, "for them" response but an aggressive, "against them" response—and this only escalated the trouble that my children splashed up on us.
4. Lastly, with my adversarial response, I settled for temporary solutions that don't get to the heart of the matter. Look at my parking lot response. I instilled guilt, I threatened a punishment, I embarrassed—and my children were left utterly unchanged by the encounter.
A Template For Gentle Listening
There's a better way—the way of grace. Grace as a mother can take many forms, but it almost always requires gentle listening.
Many moms fall into the habit of talking harshly at their children instead of talking gently with them. To speak gently with them, you have to be willing to forsake the spontaneous lectures so tempting to every parent and commit yourself to asking and listening. Our goal is not only to have a conversation but to have one that stimulates accuracy of self-view and a hunger for God's help.
Rather than an adversarial, wrecking ball response like I had in the theme park, I have found a series of five questions to be constructive in stimulating this kind of gentle conversation:
1. What was going on? Here you are getting your child to summarize what happened in the situation you are about to discuss.
2. What were you thinking and feeling as it was happening? This helps your child to think about how their heart was interacting with whatever was going on.
3. What did you do in response? With this question, you help your child see that their behavior was not shaped by the situation but by how their heart interacted with it.
4. Why did you do it—what were you trying to accomplish? Here you are helping the child examine their motives. They did what they did because they were after something.
5. What was the result? This question enables your child to see the connection between their desires, behavior, and the consequences they are now dealing with.
The purpose of these questions, when presented gently, is not to indict a child for some wrong but to help them see things about themselves that they wouldn't otherwise see.
An Impossible Standard
Let's be honest here: the kind of parenting I have described is not natural. It would be right for you to say, "If that's what's required to be a good mother, then I will never be one." If you view the fruit of the Spirit as moral goals that you have been tasked to achieve, they will seem unattainable and discouraging to you.
Think differently about the fruit of the Spirit: they are the moral gifts of a God of glorious grace. What does this mean? The Galatians 5 passage teaches me that God blesses me with forgiveness and new potential. Jesus died not only to forgive me but by his grace also to transform me. The list of character qualities is our gift of his grace, given to every mother.
So mom, if you are in Christ, all of your failures have already been forgiven; you can humbly admit them, confess them, and seek God's help. Remember that you are not trapped in your cycle of failure because a God of abundant grace is at work changing, maturing, and growing you so that progressively you are more often part of what he wants to do in your children and less frequently in the way of it.
R|M Apply Questions
1. How has God recently revealed the sin, weakness, rebellion, or failure of your children? If you have multiple kids, identify their unique struggles.
2. In what ways are you more like your child than unlike them? How do you struggle in similar ways? By admitting your own sin, how should this change your response?
3. When was the last time you had a wrecking ball response to your kids? Are there words or actions that you need to confess and ask their forgiveness for? Why might this be a struggle?
4. Do you tend to lecture your kids or talk down at them? How can you practice gentle listening with your kids? Be specific.
