It’s taken me awhile to get comfortable with the thought that my kids need to know I’m not perfect and I am just as much a sinner as they are. It’s gotta be hard being a kid always messing up and then you have these 2 grown up parents that never have to say sorry or admit when they are wrong. As we pray at the breakfast table, I think more of our prayers should sound like this. Lord, I am really struggling this morning being content in what you have called me to do. I need your help to be joyful even though I don’t feel like being joyful in what this day holds….” I find that many times when I pray my heart instead of hiding my heart from my kids, they come over and hug me or smile at me. Part of parenting is allowing our kids to see our walk with God. It is GOOD for them to hear us praise God, apologize to God, thank God, beg God, sing to God, cry to God, and laugh out loud at what He does in our lives. So here is an article I think you will like. A friend from college sent it to me. Enjoy~
Whenever I feel inadequacy as a parent, I turn to these Scriptures . . . For I am the least of the apostles, who am not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am . . . . . . and my feeling is confirmed: I am unfit to be a mother. Yet here I am, a mother; three undeniable evidences sit around our dinner table, drink four gallons of milk per week, and throw their dirty socks in the laundry basket. I am, in fact, a mother. This means that God has made me what I am not fit to be. Every time I try to understand that, I can’t, really. God gave me this job, even though I am underqualified. Counterintuitively, this knowledge—this realization that I am unfit to be a parent—strengthens me as a parent. My best parenting credential is God’s grace. By the grace of God, I am what I am . . . . . . and His grace toward me did not prove vain; but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me. (above quotes are from 1 Corinthians 15:9-10) The parenting role is overwhelming, but I strive and try harder to be a good parent, even while recognizing that I am a parent only by God’s grace. My efforts and striving only follow in the wake His grace makes. Paradoxically and wonderfully, God’s Word which makes me understand that I am unfit to be a parent is the very same Word that gives me utmost confidence to be a parent. Maybe feelings of inadequacy can be healthy. They actually give me confidence and better ability, for what is more enabling than God’s grace?
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