Seeking God's Vision for Marriage
Many of my friends walked down the wedding aisle to the hymn “Be Thou My Vision.” The melody has an ethereal quality about it. And the lyrics— to say that the lyrics are meaningful would be a gross understatement. I want to walk through every day of my married life embracing the truths of this song in my heart.
Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart; Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art...
So many things clamor for my attention when I wake up every morning. Regardless of the busyness or dullness of the day, I want the greatest reality to hit me—that the God whose name is I AM is worthy of my praise, my thoughts, and my obedience.
Will the damp towels and clothes left strewn about the room from my husband’s morning routine matter to me when the atoning work of Christ on the cross is my vision for the day? In my husband’s case, leaving towels and clothes draped around the room is not an affront meant to hurt me. But, what if it was? Is God so clearly my vision that I could persist in clinging to His grace in Christ even when my marriage relationship is strained?
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night, Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light…
When the tragedies and discouragements of life threaten to overtake our marriage then I want to think on God’s faithfulness by day and by night. Will the urgency of the day’s demands weigh so heavily on my heart and bring out the nag in me when the indwelling Holy Spirit is my comfort and peace?
Waking or sleeping, God’s presence sheds light on how He does all things for His glory. We have no cause to fear the darkness. Today—right now—we can relate to one another by grace, hoping in the future grace to be shown to us in the last day when Christ returns.
In Ephesians Paul describes the marriage relationship as a reflection of the heavenly reality of Christ’s marriage to the church.
Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her. Ephesians 5:24-25
Paul goes on to quote Genesis 2:24 to underscore the significance of this mysterious relationship:
Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.
No wonder the second stanza of “Be Thou My Vision” strikes such a chord with couples about to be united as one flesh:
Be Thou my Wisdom, and Thou my true Word; I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord…
I wonder if I could dub this song over the soundtrack on the VHS tape of our wedding. Or better yet, what if grace covered over the soundtrack of every petty argument, stray word, and rude remark I’ve ever made to my husband?
The great news is that Jesus has already done that. And He doesn’t just dub over the soundtrack of such things. He removes our sins from us as far away as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12). By the shed blood of Christ, we are forgiven. The price for my peace-filled, joy-enjoying, grace-exchanging marriage is the precious blood of the spotless Lamb of God. Who am I to scorn the sacrifice that Jesus made?--so I can hold onto my scoffing pride, self-righteous anger, and arrogant impatience toward my husband?
Thou my great Father, I Thy true son; Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one….
What a poetic reminder of the priority of fellowship with God and the preeminence of our relationships with Him as the foundation for our relationships with our spouses. The power that we need to love our spouses is supplied by God according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus (Phil. 4:19). In Christ, we can serve our partner with the strength that God supplies so that God gets the glory (1 Pet. 4:11).
Be thou my breastplate, my sword for the fight; be thou my whole armor, be thou my true might…
My power for holiness is from God, and I see Him most clearly in His word, the Bible. The Bible says that God’s grace, not fear or regret, is the song of my life. It sounds like a Christian cliché to say, “We’re together at the foot of the cross.” But when we understand that what puts us at the mercy of God at the foot of the cross is our pervasive inability to love God and each other as we ought, then all of a sudden our sin isn’t so trite anymore.
My husband’s sin isn’t so harmless, either. We’re sinners married to sinners. We sin against each other, sometimes we’re in sin together, and we even leave our sin lying around for our spouse to stumble over. We must see ourselves together at the foot of the cross. Both of us need God to look favorably upon us through Christ’s atoning sacrifice. The blood that covers my sins is the same blood that covers my husband’s sins.
Even if I were not married to a Christian man… God has freely given His Son and offers to all the body and blood of His Son Jesus if we will repent and believe. Who am I, a sinner saved by grace, to look on anyone as more desperate for that grace than I am? If I have Jesus then all I know is grace and God’s future for me is grace upon grace. By that grace, we can love our spouses as God has instructed us.
Be thou my soul's shelter, be thou my strong tower: O raise thou me heavenward, great Power of my power…
And what of the millions of little, mundane things that occur each day? What about my sharp tongue, for example? If God did not withhold His only Son giving us all His riches in Christ Jesus, who am I to withhold words of kindness from my husband? Through Christ in me I can speak the truth in love as He commands and compels me. Instead of merely biting my tongue and avoiding hurtful words, by God's grace my tongue is loosed to edify and build up my husband instead.
When Jesus died on the cross He reconciled us to God and He wrote His song of reconciliation by grace across our entire lives. God has shown us grace and we can be conduits of grace to others.
Riches I heed not, nor man's empty praise: be thou mine inheritance now and always…
The reward I am looking for in loving my husband is not bound up in how my husband responds to me. How our souls can be refreshed and our marriages strengthened when we believe: “Thou mine Inheritance, now and always; Thou and Thou only, first in my heart.” A godly husband is a gift from the Lord, and I do enjoy the gift God has given me. But the gift of my husband is meant to draw me to worship the Giver.
Because we are all so prone to worship our gifts, this hymn reminds us to pray, “Be thou and thou only the first in my heart; O Sovereign of heaven, my treasure thou art.”
“Be Thou My Vision” is an epic song to walk down the aisle to. The triumph of God’s grace in Christ is an even greater song to dance to by faith.
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Gloria Furman is a member of Redeemer Church of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates where her husband Dave is the pastor. They have three children - Aliza, Norah, and Judson. Gloria blogs regularly at Domestic Kingdom.
Gospel Centered Parenting
Gospel centered parenting is filled with complexities, mysteries, and endless situations that call for practical advice. As parents, we often get so bogged down in questions of what to do that we lose sight of why we’re doing what we do and how we should do it. My aim here is to take a big picture view of parenting. I will not answer all the questions, but I want to offer a way of thinking about parenting that will help with specific difficulties. The big picture of parenting is the big picture of the Bible because parenting is a depiction of the gospel. Consider the language Scripture uses to describe our relationship to God: Conversion is called being “born again” (John 3:3); our salvation is called an “inheritance” (1 Peter 1:3-4); God disciplines those He loves (Proverbs 3:11-12); we are called “children of God” (John 1:12, 3:1). Our father/child relationship to God is so significant that Sinclair Ferguson says, “This is the fundamental way for the Christian to think about himself: ‘I am a child of God and his people are my brothers and sisters.’” Parenting is a picture of the gospel: to us, to our kids, and to the world around us.
On one hand, this sounds like good news because it roots the everyday, non-stop work of parenting in something big and meaningful. On the other hand, this could be discouraging because we all know that we are imperfect reflections of the gospel. This is an appropriate tension because the gospel is both bad and good news. We are simultaneously doing really well and really poor in our parenting, depending on the day and subject matter. That is our inescapable reality, and nothing speaks to that reality more effectively than the gospel.
THE GOAL OF GOSPEL CENTERED PARENTING
Much of our parenting struggles are about not having the right goal. Every parent wants to raise a good kid, but what is a “good kid”? What shapes our understanding of the stuff that makes a child good … what other people think of them, how well they do in school, how much they obey, how athletic or smart they are? These are all normal desires that parents have for their kids, but to the extent that any of these govern our parenting, they become idols. We bow down to goals of image, performance, control, and the like. We must subject our goals in parenting to God’s goal for parenting. There are probably a number of ways to describe what God desires for our children. I will take my cue from the book of Proverbs: The goal of parenting is to glorify God by raising wise sons and daughters.
“Wisdom” in the Bible characterizes one who loves God and knows how to live life according the priorities and purposes of God. As John Piper counseled the congregation of Bethlehem Baptist, wisdom refers to “practical knowledge of how to attain true and lasting happiness.” The wise person is characterized by humility (Proverbs 11:12) and obedience to God’s commands (Deuteronomy 4:5-6). Piper also insists that wisdom results in a “sensitive, mature judgment or discernment of how the fear of the Lord should work itself out in all the circumstances not specifically dealt with in the Bible.” A good kid, then, is one who is maturing in wisdom, learning to live in submission to God and to His will. This captures what we really want for our children.
The gospel starts with God; so we want to start from a God-centered view of parenting, not a kid-centered or culture-centered view. The primary issue is not how well a kid stacks up to other kids or even to our expectations. God is the issue. Are our children oriented toward God? Do they honor Him? That is the starting point. Everything else follows. Dan Allender writes in How Children Raise Parents: “A parent has only one core task: to reveal God.” How do we do that? Well, God reveals Himself to us in the gospel story of creation, fall, and redemption. Let’s consider how the gospel gives us a framework for parenting.
CREATION: Identity and Purpose
In creation, the man and woman are set apart in distinction above everything else because they are made in the likeness of God. People are created in the image of God, which means we are made to live in unhindered fellowship with God and others, representing and pointing to the glory of God in all we do. We have a hard time imagining how great we are made to be. In Created in God’s Image Anthony Hoekema makes this startling statement: “What we see and hear in Christ is what God intended for us.”
Not only does God create us with this unique identity (image-bearer), He also infuses our lives with purpose by giving us the task of subduing and ruling. God put Adam and Eve in the garden and told them to “work it and take care of it” (Genesis 2:15). The story of creation is the story of God preparing the Earth to become His kingdom, and raising kids is at the center of His plan.
In creation, God reveals Himself as Creator and Ruler, and in Him we understand our identity and purpose. The critical point is that we should have a high view of our children. They bear the image of God and are meant to live on the mission of God. So if the core task of a parent is to reveal God, then we must instill in our children a sense of identity and purpose that befits the children of God.
As a point of practical application: How do you talk about your kids? Do you talk as though their identity is based on their performance or failure? Do you convey that they are a burden, as if their purpose was simply to accommodate your lifestyle? Everyone instills some kind of identity and purpose in their children: a child-centered identity or a child-honoring identity, a life lived for self or for the kingdom of God.
A logical question at this point would be: “If my kids are created in the image of God, then why do they disobey so much?” Well, they disobey so much for the same reason we disobey so much. They are corrupted by sin, which is the next part of the story.
FALL: Leaky Vessels
Before the fall, Adam and Eve knew who they were and what they were made for. There was no doubt or insecurity about these matters. It was not until sin entered the world that they began to fear and doubt. After the fall, they began to feel shame about who they were and experience struggle in their work. Their world unraveled, and all the certainties about God and life were clouded by sin.
Our children are born outside of Eden, and from birth onward they are looking for an identity and purpose. A brief survey of parenting wisdom confirms these core needs. Dan Allender suggests that children are asking two questions: “Am I loved?” and “Can I get my own way?” The first question is obviously tied to identity. The second question – though less obvious – is connected to purpose. Children are leaky vessels that need to be constantly filled-up with the answer to these questions. In Grace Based Parenting, Tim Kimmel identifies our children’s three basic needs as security, significance, and strength. We will explore these basic questions and needs in a moment, but first I want to emphasize that the effects of sin in our children are not merely behavioral. These effects are profoundly linked to identity and purpose.
Through a variety of means, Satan attacks our children at the level of their identity and purpose. If he can get them to believe that they are nothing more than a sinner (a message propagated through much of the evangelical church), then he can render them useless in the mission of God. The modern view of the world and humanity belittles both our identity and purpose. The world is so vast. What importance could we possibly have if all we are is a blip on this little planet, which is nothing more than a spec in the vast universe? The modern view is that we are insignificant. If a child sees his or herself as “just a sinner,” then they probably won’t sense much ownership in the mission of God to establish His kingdom on the Earth. But if our children understand themselves to be God’s children and ambassadors, then they will come alive to the mission of God and have a deep sense of fealty to the king and stewardship of His mission.
Sin has also affected our parenting. We demonstrate our tendencies toward legalism and licentiousness, not only in the way we relate to God, but also in the ways we relate to our children. Regarding licentiousness, Tim Kimmel points out that even Christian parents “erase clear moral boundaries” with their children. He adds, “It’s actually quite easy to become a bit desensitized by the boundary-less culture that we were raised in.” Equally dangerous is legalistic parenting, which moves the boundaries in far tighter than they need be. The following chart outlines some of the errors in legalism and license:
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Expectations
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Legalism requires external “obedience” but not transformation of the heart | License “loves” a child so much as she is that it doesn’t require behavioral change |
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Communication
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Legalism talks a lot about what a child should or should not be doing, but does not adequately addressing a child’s identity | License talk a lot about identity and is concerned with self-esteem, but does not adequately speak of the actions that flow from one’s identity. |
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Motivation |
Legalism fosters a culture of performance and seeks to motivate children by fear of consequences | License promotes a culture of permissiveness and seeks to motivate children by self-gratification |
Another way of thinking about the ways sin has affected our parenting is to contrast functional and formative parenting. Functional parenting is what we do in spite of what we say we believe. It has a short-term focus of doing what works and getting through the day, whereas formative parenting has long-term goal of raising wise children. In the day-to-day, we settle for much less than the glory of God: we abuse our authority; we value the wrong things; and we don’t adequately address the inner world of our children. All of this is functional parenting.
| Functional Parenting | Formative Parenting |
| Focuses on behavior (external) | Focuses on the heart (internal) |
| The goal is to get a child to act a certain way (behavior modification) | Aims to raise a child who wants to act that way (wisdom) |
| Parental authority becomes an end in itself (tends toward legalism or license based on which one will secure proper behavior) | Parental authority is a means toward the end of harnessing a child’s will and imparting wisdom through instruction and discipline |
| Children earn a parents acceptance through behavior or performance | Acceptance is unconditional and is the basis of a child’s behavior (not the goal of it). |
| Disobedience is the problem, and it must be disciplined. | Disobedience is a manifestation of the problem, and must be disciplined as a means of getting to the root of sin |
When you read the Bible you see God’s law (behaviors and actions that He wants us to exemplify), but a closer look at the Bible shows us that God’s goal encompasses more than that. It’s not merely external conformity that God wants. He wants His children to become the kind of people who naturally live in accordance to His law. God’s goal for us is that we experience transformation in our mind, heart, and will, which then expresses itself in our behavior.
If we want to raise wise sons and daughters, we must have a long-term vision for forming the internal world of our children (heart, mind, emotions) as the wellspring of their behavior. This is the aim of the next part of the gospel story.
REDEMPTION: The Power of Grace
In redemption, God is renewing all things according to His original plan. God sent Jesus to re-establish the beachhead of His kingdom expansion and to redeem a people through whom He would expand His kingdom on Earth. In Christ, we are adopted into the family of God, wherein we regain our sense of identity as His children. In Christ, we are commissioned to disciple the nations, wherein we regain our sense of purpose. The gospel restores us to the life we were made to live – fellowship with God and work in His kingdom.
Just as God meets our deepest needs in the gospel, we must answer our children’s deepest questions of identity and purpose by embodying the gospel of grace in their lives. To do this, we must experience God’s grace ourselves. God loves us unconditionally. He demonstrates His love by rescuing us even though we are proud and arrogant. He reconciles us even though we are His enemies and grants us ongoing access to His presence even though we continue to struggle with sin. Our experience of grace leads us to ask: Do I show my children unconditional love by moving toward them in their disobedience, embracing them in their sin, and inviting them into relationship with me regardless of their condition?
God restores us to live the life we were meant to live. He prepares good works for us to walk in, gifts us accordingly, and supplies the strength to exercise those gifts. Again, we must ask: Do I empower my children by helping them gain a sense of their gifts and place in this world and even by involving them in my work? Gospel-centered parenting is not legalistic. It begins with love and acceptance. It is not licentious because that love compels us to action. Just as Tim Kimmel has written, “grace does not exclude obedience, respect, boundaries, or discipline, but does determine the climate in which these important parts of parenting are carried out.”
With our restored identity in mind, we provide our children a sense of secure love by accepting them as they are, giving them a sense of belonging in our family, and lavishing our affection on them. With our restored purpose in mind, we provide our children with significance by inviting them into the mission of God, affirming their strengths and gifts, and empowering them to take risks.
Gospel-centered parenting begins with understanding what it means to be a child of God. As we experience His grace toward us in Christ, we reveal God to our children.
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After six years as a missionary to college students at the University of Texas and four years as an associate pastor at Coram Deo church in Omaha, NE, Will Walker followed God’s call to plant Providence Church in the fall of 2010. He currently writes for World Harvest Mission and New Growth Press. Will and his wife, Debbie, are the parents of two boys, Ethan and Holden.
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For more resources on applying the gospel to parenting, check out A Beginner's Guide to Family Worship by Winfield Bevins.
For more free articles on gospel-centered parenting, read: Gospel-Saturated Family Discipleship by Mathew Sims, A Child's Gospel by Ben Connelly, and Discipleship is for Young Parents Too by Melanie Yong
Becoming a Parent & Discipling Children - Part Three
This is part 3 of the 3-part series, “Becoming a Parent & Discipling Children” by Jonathan Dodson True Parenthood Often, when we face the fears and frustrations of parenting, we end up asking another question: “Can I have my own way?”[5] Can I get instant parenting skill? Can I just hang out with the guys? Can I leave my responsibilities behind and go shopping? Can my kids just shut up and obey? In these moments, our will grinds against God’s will. When we insist on our own way, we reach the friction point in which personal freedom must give way to parental duty, and we fight it with every fiber of our being.
There are places in our hearts over which we have hung the teenager’s sign, “My Room. Do Not Enter.” These are rooms where the dirty laundry of our hearts reeks of selfishness. We want to parent on our terms and when our terms aren’t met, we get bitter or despondent. We yell because we can’t fix things and sulk because we are losing our identity. What is really happening? God is fixing us by reshaping our identity, and our fears and our frustrations are flares warning us of parent-centered parenting.
When our freedoms are removed, our idols are revealed. For some it may be the idolatry of time—I want to do what I want to do. For others, the idolatry of identity—I’m not just a mother! In these heart-wrenching moments, when we sense a loss of freedom, God is bringing us to himself through our children. It is when we find ourselves acting like children, defiantly insisting on our own way, that God wants to meet us. His aim is to show us our sinful rebellion against his way and lead us to repentance and renewal.
With the outstretched arms of the Spirit and the Son, the Father calls us away from bitterness and despondency into the delightful refuge of communion with the Trinity. God wants to lead us from frustration into fellowship with him by showing us that we do not have what it takes and that we can not always get our own way. Through the frustrations of parenting, God seeks to magnify his sufficiency by releasing his redemptive power and love in and through us to bless us and our children. In those moments of weakness, he wants to give us his strength, knowing that we become true parents when we are truly dependent on him. How then do we become mature parents, parents who parent redemptively?
Redemptive Parenting In order to avoid parent-centered parenting, parenting which idolizes our freedoms and fears, mothers and fathers must be displaced from parenting. Instead of taking charge, Christ must take center stage in our parenting. Perhaps the biggest lie we have believed is that our lives are a story about ourselves and that our families exist to serve our needs. The first step in Christ-centered parenting is to repent of parent-centered parenting, of placing ourselves first in our families and in our lives.
Second, rejoice that God has created you to parent. Genesis 1:28 informs us that we were made and blessed in order to parent: “And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.’” Why fill the earth with children? Genesis 1:26 informs us that Adam and Eve were made in the image of the triune God: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…” At the very least, this tells us that our parenting is a part of a grander story, a story whose plotline includes filling the earth with images of God, of his glory. As parents, we have been given the glorious task of participating in the spreading and shaping of the divine image of God’s glory on earth, through raising our children.
Third, recognize and receive God’s provision for all your parental and personal failures past, present, and future. As the story of Scripture makes plain, our ability to live and parent for God’s glory has been damaged by sin, sins of fear and of frustration, which diminish God’s glory: “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3.23). Consider pausing now to repent of making much of yourself in parenting and in life, and receive the restorative forgiveness of God in Christ: “To him (Christ) all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name” (Acts 10:43). If we choose to believe in ourselves, that we have what it takes, then we reject our role in this story told by the prophets, a story of rescue and redemption. By relying on fix-it masculinity or wallowing in feminine frailty, we throw off God’s redemptive plan to restore his image in us and insist that we remain on center stage, no matter how strong or pathetic we may look.
Fourth, claim and display the power of God’s new creation. As forgiven parents, we are not cleaned up and left powerless to parent. The damaged image of God in us and our children can be restored and renewed to display the glory of Christ as his new creation. Those who believe in Jesus have “put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created us” (Col 3:10). By experiencing this image renewal, we align ourselves with the redemptive story, participating in the grace of God for the glory of God. Thus, the Spirit of God empowers us to live and parent like God in Christ. The power of this image-renewing work, in turn, produces God-centered parents who patiently and redemptively raise their children to keep Jesus on center stage in their own lives.
To be sure, this side of the new earth fear and frustration will never entirely disappear from our hearts. Redemption is a project. In fact, fears and frustrations will undoubtedly cycle in and out, manifesting themselves differently depending on what stage of life our children are in. However, by confessing our fears and frustrations and repenting of our pride and despondency, we can live in the richness of God’s forgiveness and the power of his new creation, displaying the beauty of God’s redemptive love for us and our children.
In turn, we will honor our heavenly Father and help our children learn to struggle well with their own fears and frustrations. By diverting our eyes from fears and freedoms and turning them to all that God is for us in Jesus through the Spirit, we will gain more strength and freedom, joy and peace than ten thousand babysitters could ever offer! Becoming a mature parent is a process, one that only truly happens when recognize and receive God’s provision and power in Jesus.
[5] This is the second of two diagnostic questions proposed by Dan Allender. His first question is: “Am I loved?” This question gives a biblical twist to Eldredge’s man-centered question: “Do I have what it takes?” In How Children Raise Parents, Allender charts the four different ways we can answer this combinations of questions, pointing out that only answers that provide a biblical path to parenting—“Yes you are loved, and no, you may not have your own way.”
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Jonathan Dodson (M.Div, Th.M) is happy husband to Robie, and proud father to Owen, Ellie & Rosamund. He is also the lead pastor of Austin City Life church and a leader in The GCM Collective, PlantR and Gospel Centered Discipleship.com. Jonathan is also the author of forthcoming Gospel-Centered Discipleship and writes regularly for The Resurgence, Boundless, and The High Calling. He blogs at jonathandodson.org, enjoys listening to M. Ward, watching sci-fi, and following Jesus.
Becoming a Parent & Discipling Children - Part Two
This is part 2 of the 3-part series, “Becoming a Parent & Discipling Children” by Jonathan Dodson You Don’t Have What It Takes John Eldredge, best-selling author of Wild at Heart and You Have What It Takes: What Every Father Needs to Hear, would have us believe that, for fathers, the most important question we can ask and answer for ourselves and our sons is “Do I have what it takes?”[3] He argues that most of us don’t realize that we are built for fatherhood and that we need to know, as our sons need to know, that we have what it takes. Although Eldredge is right in pointing out that mothers and fathers have been given the natural equipment to parent, he underestimates the bent motivations we have in parenting. To be sure, Eldredge directs the wounded parent to the healing Christ, but only as a way of getting us back on track in the task of child affirmation, of telling our sons: “You have what it takes,” and our daughters “You are lovely.” As a result, his model of parenting can boil down to a task-based, self-esteem building enterprise that dangerously neglects the sinful issues of the parental heart.
The reality is that we really don’t have what it takes to parent for the glory of God and the good of our children. Our natural equipment for instruction, discipline, care, and love is in disrepair; we can’t consistently and accurately instruct, discipline, care and love our children, even if we have received the love of God in Christ. Time and again, our children push us to the limits of our love, and we cross the line of selfish anger or embittered depression. We will spank or yell out of spite, not mercy and love. In dark and honest moments, we will daydream of life before children. We do not have what it takes to parent our children.
The godly response to our paralyzing fear is not to pat ourselves on our backs and assume that we have what it takes, nor is it to counter our parental limitations with earnest preparation. Instead, we need to redemptively confront our fears. If we respond to fear-motivated preparation and personal paralysis with a you-have-what-it-takes attitude, we bypass the heart, where our fears fester.
Although diligent preparation and careful concern can be a godly response to the task of parenting, it is the heart that determines the righteousness of our actions.
Related to this fact, is the reality that our children see our hearts as well as our actions and act out of their own impure motives. More than success is at stake, our hearts, parent and child’s, are on the table in the privilege of parenting.[4] If we are to parent well, then we will need more than task-based survival tips and emotional pats on the back. We will need the gospel to redemptively engage our fears…and our frustrations.
Frustration and Parenting Fear isn’t the only obstacle encountered in parenting. Frustration over failure and freedoms lost often haunt us. Of course, we don’t always understand this dynamic when we snap at our children. I have particularly faced frustration with the birth of our daughter, Ellie. Unlike our son, a sleep-through-the-night poster child, Ellie took a cry-through-the-night approach. For a while, this was both her day job and her night job. She was what you might ambiguously refer to as colicky. Needless to say, I don’t like colic. More than once I have lost my patience with Ellie’s unpleasant, incessant crying.
Consider the following snapshot. It is evening, after a long day at work. Owen is in bed but Ellie is hungry, so I feed her, wrap her, and put her in the swing in hopes of some silent time to myself. Five minutes later, her blood-curdling cry severs the silence. I swiftly return to her with sucker in hand to plug up the noise. (Oh the sucker, a tease for both parent and child, which provides teasing and temporary relief.) Another five minutes go by and out comes the sucker along with the screams, only this time they are louder and shriller. This cycle repeats about twenty times, and I lose it. I huffily run in to the room, swiftly pick up Ellie, and with a couple shakes I angrily reason with her: “Ellie why won’t you go to sleep? You have already eaten!” Minutes, if not seconds later, I am beside myself. How could I lose my temper with my six week old baby daughter?
In the same scenario my wife responds differently. Instead of getting angry, she patiently returns again and again, speaking sweet words into our daughter’s ear. How does she do it? Sometimes in loving motherly despair. One day she called me at work in total despondency. She desperately shared that she just can’t do “it” anymore, that she had to get out of the house. She went on to describe how she couldn’t escape and informed me that she was getting a job. She wondered who she had become and thought to herself, “I am a terrible mother.”
Responses of Husbands and Wives As our children grow, parenting scenarios change but the challenges remain somewhat the same. What are we to do with the challenge of our frustrations? Talking them through with my wife has been enlightening and helpful. She has suggested that, perhaps part of the reason I can get so upset with our helpless six week old, is that I can not fix her crying. All my earnest preparation, my swaddling techniques, and carefully situated suckers fail in soothing my daughter’s cry. My response to the frustration is to fix things. As a man I am a fixer. If I can’t fix the problem, then my manhood is being challenged. If my manhood is challenged, I have every right to get angry. So goes, not the counsel of my wife, but the logic of this line of reasoning. Am I to conclude that the problem is really that I can not fix my daughter’s colic, that my manhood is being challenged?
I believe the problem runs much deeper than mister fix-it masculinity. The reality is that when I am confronted with the fact that I am powerless to fix my problems, I am forced to recognize that I do not have what it takes. Accepting that I do not have what it takes, which is what all my earnest preparation sought to secure, requires humility, which is part of true manhood. Furthermore, the inability to control my daughter’s crying has a direct affect on my schedule. It results in less free time, time to do what I want to do. In these moments, my inability to fix the problem and my frustration from lost freedom combine to produce a powder keg of anger. This anger stems from the fact that, in those moments, I am the center of my family. Instead of taking the path of servant leader, I choose the path of commando leader. I deserve my freedom!
What about a mother’s frustrated response to lost freedoms? Perhaps despair and self-deprecating thoughts are the appropriate response to a mother’s failure to fully empathize with all her children’s needs, to wholly love the chaos of being a stay-at-home mom. While mothers are generally better equipped to empathize with their children than fathers, should we then conclude that the very thing that makes them mothers—femininity—is the same thing that leads them to despair? When faced with the demands and frustrations of parenting, does the feminine capacity for empathy necessarily lead to motherly despondency?
I believe that the problem goes deeper than the limitations of feminine empathy. It has to do with resistance to God’s plan for children to raise their mothers. It has to do with our idolatrous association of freedom with identity. For instance, whenever my wife encounters the frustrations of parenting, it easy for her to mistakenly equate lost freedom with loss of identity. Though she is certainly not able to carry on all her hobbies and friendships with pre-parenthood potency, she has not lost her identity. It is being transformed. However, the reality is that my wife’s loss of freedom sometimes makes her feel trapped. In turn, the trapped feelings associated with motherhood lead to guilt over passionless parenting.
Other times, screaming kids and a messy house drive mothers to the bottom of their desire to parent. In those incredibly stressful moments, mothers don’t want to mother; they want out. Understandably, moms need breaks from the demands of their children. However, focusing on a way out will not change the frustrated heart. Instead, redemptive parenting begins with confessing to God that we don’t have what it takes to be a good and godly parent. When confronted with either a limited capacity for empathy and love or an extinguished desire to mother, focusing on lost freedoms or parental inability is not the pathway to godly parenting. Fixing things doesn’t work either. The pathway is paved with repentance, faith and grace. How do we graciously respond in these moments for the good of our children and the glory of our God? What role does faith have in parenting?
[3] John Eldredge, You Have What It Takes: What Every Father Needs to Hear (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2004).
[4] For a book that addresses parenting a child’s heart see, Paul Tripp, Shepherding a Child’s Heart (Wapwallopen, PA: Shepherd Press, 1995).
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Jonathan Dodson (M.Div, Th.M) is happy husband to Robie, and proud father to Owen, Ellie & Rosamund. He is also the lead pastor of Austin City Life church and a leader in The GCM Collective, PlantR and Gospel Centered Discipleship.com. Jonathan is also the author of forthcoming Gospel-Centered Discipleship and writes regularly for The Resurgence, Boundless, and The High Calling. He blogs at jonathandodson.org, enjoys listening to M. Ward, watching sci-fi, and following Jesus.
Becoming a Parent & Discipling Children - Part One
As a single and as a young husband, I stood in awe of parents. They seemed so grown-up, so mature, so together. I recall the passing comment of a mentor and father of five who shared the news of his wife’s recent pregnancy as “bringing an eternal soul into the world.” The spiritual sobriety of his perspective made me marvel at parenthood even more. I wondered if I would ever become that mature. From a distance, parenthood can appear to be the next step in human maturity—adolescent, college student, young adult, married person, parent. (For some reason, popular perception of empty-nesters doesn’t translate to the final step in maturity.) Those without children, tend to view those with children as wiser, more responsible human beings. After all, recent studies have shown that only the well-educated and affluent are the married-with-kids type.[1] Are we then to conclude that true maturity begins with parenthood? Hardly. Most of us can tell adolescent stories of the parents who let their children get away with anything, parents who seemed more immature than their kids. Maturity isn’t always present in parents. As a parent who is two kids into fatherhood, I can vouch that there is nothing magically maturing about having kids. So how does one become mature enough to parent?
Certainly, close-up encounters with parents reveal that maturity doesn’t go hand in hand with motherhood or fatherhood, whether the parent is single or married. Yet, if we are to parent well, some level of maturity is necessary. Perhaps even more important is the willingness for a parent to mature as a person with their kids, a challenge well captured by Dan Allender in his book How Children Raise Parents.[2]
Indeed, if we are willing to learn along with our children, parenthood may prove to be a maturing, even transforming experience. On the other hand, disengaged or duty-driven parenting can easily prove to be a paralyzing and heart hardening experience. Regardless of how you parent, one thing is certain; raising children will bring its fair share of fear and frustration, for both mothers and fathers.
The challenges of parenthood begin before the baby is born. The nine months before birth are a microcosm of the liberties and limitations of parenthood. Sonograms, name selection, baby room shopping, loss of time, money, and sleep all transpire in those few months, the beginnings of the diverse joys and pains of parenting. Fear sets in early on. Will the baby be born healthy or at all? How will we financially support another person? What about breast-feeding and diaper-changing? How will my spouse change? What if I screw up my kid? Can I do this? Depending on how we respond to these questions, fear of failure can result in earnest preparation or personal paralysis.
After the baby is born and the novelty wears off, our fears can quickly turn into frustrations. While I trembled at the thought of guiding and providing for our second child before she was born, afterwards I found myself incredibly annoyed and frustrated with Ellie’s incessant crying. Pre-birth fear is easily turned into post-partum frustration. As a result, questions begin to cascade. Why won’t that baby just shut up? How am I supposed to work on three hours of sleep? Why won’t my child just obey me the first time? What happened to my wife/husband? Where did all my free time go? Who am I? How do I respond to that!
The various frustrations encountered in parenting can quickly turn into anger or despair in lament over the loss of past freedoms. We discover just how much pre-parenthood personal freedom we had when we lose sleep, time with our spouses, time to see movies, to have dinner out, to enjoy quiet coffee shop reading and reflection, and time with friends.
Depending on how we respond, frustration over freedoms lost can lead to personal reformation or deep-seated resentment.
How are we to redemptively engage our parental fears and frustrations? How much of our fear and frustration is valid? How can frustration lead to redemption instead of resentment? In the space that remains, we will explore some of these gut-level questions with the aim of shedding light on what it looks like to parent by faith in the midst of fear and frustration.
Fear of Failure Parenting In the months leading up Owen’s birth, our first child, something radical happened. All of a sudden, my strolls through bookshops led me, not down the usual Religion, Literature and Sociology aisles, but quickly into the Family and Parenting sections. Fearful of parental failure, I was willing to learn from anyone. My reading was not limited to the subjects of children and fathers, but even extended to literature on motherhood. I can remember an afternoon spent at Barnes & Noble, where I scoured the racks for wisdom. Consumed by the fear of failing as a father, I desperately picked up the camo-colored New Dad's Survival Guide: Man-to-Man Advice for First-Time Fathers, by Scott Mactavish. I didn’t have a clue who Scott was, but I knew I was both a first-timer and in need of survival tips.
Fear jump-started my parental preparation. I began to line my utility belt with as many survival tips as possible. I soon called a weekly meeting for expecting fathers to plow through the emotional, spiritual, and practical issues of fatherhood. I frantically looked for post-graduate job placement and began to budget with a passion. In earnest preparation I sought to stamp out my parental fear.
This is not every parent’s response. Other soon-to-be parents encounter personal paralysis when considering the thought of becoming a parent. Feelings of inadequacy and thoughts of failure to meet our children’s emotional, social and physical needs converge, sending a paralyzing arrow of insufficiency straight to the heart. Add to that the tremor of being spiritually responsible for an eternal soul and the wincing pain of the financial demands in caring for another family member.
The fear that motivated my preparation was not constant; it also gave way to personal paralysis. We were expecting Owen. I was in graduate school and graduation was imminent. My wife was in her last month of pregnancy and had taken leave from work. I had been interviewing for months, working my way around the country and down the list of potential employers. We had no savings. I worked as an evening security guard at a prominent advertising firm for ten bucks an hour. We were on state health care and our expenses were about to skyrocket. No job, no money, no prospects, no hope. I experienced a deep, troubling, soul-wrenching despair. In the face of my apparent incompetence, my despair led to debilitating fear. I couldn’t study, make enough money for my family, or look people in the eye. Fortunately, it only lasted a day. Nevertheless, paralyzing fear laid its hands on my heart and, in an instant, my spirit of self-reliant preparation crumbled under the weight of worry.
Some of us respond to our parental fears by spending untold hours worrying instead of sleeping, hardening instead of embracing the in-breaking reality of parenthood. We fear that we will repeat our parents’ failures, and conclude that somehow we are hard-wired for second-rate parenting. Others of us respond by extreme preparation, thinking that if we read and prepare enough we will succeed. What are we to do with these responses? Is preparation the strong, godly response and paralysis the weak, ungodly response? How should we engage these fears?
[1] Married couples with children now account for less than a quarter of the U.S.population. Sociologists point out that this marriage gap is largely class-based. Blaine Harden, “Numbers Drop for the Married with Children,” Washington Post Mar 4, 2007:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/03/AR2007030300841_pf.html
[2] Dan Allender, How Children Raise Parents: The Art of Listening to Your Family(Colorado Springs: WaterBrook Press, 2003).
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Jonathan Dodson (M.Div, Th.M) is happy husband to Robie, and proud father to Owen, Ellie & Rosamund. He is also the lead pastor of Austin City Life church and a leader in The GCM Collective, PlantR and Gospel Centered Discipleship.com. Jonathan is also the author of forthcoming Gospel-Centered Discipleship and writes regularly for The Resurgence, Boundless, and The High Calling. He blogs at jonathandodson.org, enjoys listening to M. Ward, watching sci-fi, and following Jesus.