Smores & Parenting

This will be some what of a random post. But with it being so cold, Aaron and I had to come up with something fun for the boys to do.  We decided to make s'mores in our backyard.  As you can see below the boys were just thrilled about it ~ umm not so much.  They were both terrified of the fire and would much rather eat the marshmallows before they were roasted.  Parker settled on some jelly beans! 

It's not like me to post many personal issues on here but this is weighing so heavy on my heart.
 

Shauna put this into the perfect words! She has a great way with words, you should check out her blog!

My ideas for discipline and parenting are being challenged lately.
My boys are getting bigger.
They are changing.
I have really been trying to establish a normal (non-angry) routine for when my sons mis-behave, instead of always feeling like i am flying by the seat of my pants and managing their need for rules and boundaries.
This is hard.
I have a lot of fears.
Mostly my fears are of making mistakes and being unfair.
Fear of whether or not my father in heaven is looking at me with pity and disappointment or with pride.
I am working on examining myself....but many times i feel like a broken lady trying to lead needy babies....
I want more for them, you know?
There are plenty of truths that are meant to comfort and encourage me in these fears, but right now i am just learning to feel my feelings and maybe even label them, before i can accept grace and healing for them.

Basically, Cason never went through the terrible two's ~ but lately he has been acting out and it's just not like him.  It's at these moments that I question myself and fear that I am doing something wrong...also the boys have been fighting with each other a lot lately which also bothers me.  Aaron and I are on this journey together, we have never been parents before and for the most part we agree on things but there has been times when our ideas of "discipline" clash.  I was reading one of my favorite blogs the other day and found this written so well, I truly believe God showed me this right when I needed it! 

 The speaker, Mark Hamby, from Lamplighter publishing, used Fenelon’s points to drive home the idea that parenting is about seeking relationship and not merely behavior from our children.  Far too often, I find myself so determined to achieve a certain level of obedience and respect from them, that I’m oblivious to what is really at the heart of their ‘discord’.  And admittedly, the desire for prompt obedience is often self-centered.  We want our children to make us look good;  to prove to the world that we are indeed good parents.   We’re so afraid of letting them make mistakes.   We parent them more like drill sargents than we do loving mothers and fathers.   Have we not been given the unconditional love of our heavenly Father?  Do we not defy and disobey and display profound ingratitude to Him daily?  And what does He do?  He welcomes us with open arms…..the arms of One who poured out His life for us on the cross to ransom us.   He forgives and forgets.  His mercies are new to us every morning.  God gives us grace, pressed down, shaken together, running over and  yet we measure out to our children tiny doses of mercy laced with hosts of rules and scoldings and “I told ya so’s”.

Our authority should be exercised with humility.  Christ is our supreme example:  His humility cost him His very life.  We often associate authority with power and might, but as C.S. Lewis once said,

“Authority exercised with humility and obedience accepted with delight are the very lines along which our spirits live.”

We must surrender our need to always be right and humble ourselves in service to our children.   As foreign as that may sound, that is exactly what our Father has done for us.  He could have come in power, seized upon our frailties and weaknesses and demanded right behavior.  But instead, He took on human flesh and died that we might have life.

Does this grace and humility mean that we have no rules, no boundaries.  On the contrary.   Those whom the Lord loves He chastens.    It is our primary job to ‘discipline’ our children, but that word means ‘teach’.   I think we often jump right to ‘punish’—which should be reserved for extreme cases of direct defiance.  Likewise, God has given us rules, that if followed, will lead to happiness and unity.  His standards are incredibly high, as should ours be for our children.  But the final answer does not lie in following the rules.  He has not been content to see our behavior realigned.   He went to every length to reach our hearts:  His grace and mercy cannot be exhausted.

You might think that I am providing the solution to our parenting conundrum as a simple ‘Show more grace to your children’.   I am not.

The solution is always Christ.   I will always fail to bestow enough grace.  I will always, even in my best attempts, fail to love them unconditionally.  The real answer for us all is the forgiveness and mercy of  the One perfect parent, whose love has no limits and whose grace knows no bounds.