Remember the metaphor we used way back at the beginning of the book? Parenting can be a lot like taking a long road trip. As moms and dads, we're trying so hard to keep our families safe and heading in the right direction that sometimes we forget we're not the ones in control of the car. We'll all face obstacles as we drive, and we have a choice in how to handle them: we can either react in fear, clutching the steering wheel ever more tightly, or we can react in trust, remembering that God is di-recting our way. But when it comes down to our day-to-day parenting choices, we have to move past the theoretical. What can we do to become safer "drivers" and make sure we're not standing in the way of the work God wants to do in our families?
I want to take a few minutes here to recap where we've been on our trip. I've summarized the thoughts and principles from the earlier chapters, distilling each chapter's message down to a few key lessons. My hope is that these spiritual "road signs" will be memorable enough to stick in your mind and help you the next time you're struggling. Think of these as the parenting equivalent of those big, orange signs you see on the highway. We zoom by them every day as we get from point A to point B and hardly notice them. Both in the real world and in the world of parenting, these signs are easy to ignore. But if we pay attention and respect their messages, they will help us travel the road wisely and safely.
Reading a book like this can generate all kinds of emotions. Some of you may feel as if you are way beyond the wisdom expressed in this book. Maybe you're well down the road of life and past the stage of raising teenagers. If that's the case, I'm grateful you cared enough to read our story. Please consider pouring your life wisdom into other families who are still navigating this season of life and working desperately to make sense of it all.
I suspect that far more of you may feel as if you're way behind. You may even worry that you've blown it too badly to ever recover. To that I say, "Balderdash." If I want you to get one thing from this book, it's the pivotal truth that our God is a redemptive and restorative God. He loves to fix stuff. You might say he's an expert at redemption; he can and does specialize in recovering everything lost or broken in our lives. If our story does nothing else, it should convince you of God's divine ability to repair and restore the messed-up pieces of broken lives. After all, he healed our family. He can heal yours, too.
Chapter One
Yield to the Holy Spirit
Seek wisdom from God as you interpret your child's behavior.
When we rely on our own ability to read our children's actions and attitudes, and when we respond to them solely out of our own limited understanding, we will crash and burn. We need to seek the Holy Spirit's leading and ask him to illuminate the reason behind our children's behavior.
No Baggage
Break free of the past--yours and your children's--and focus on the present.
It's so easy to make assumptions about our children's struggles and attitudes based on what has happened before. We get stuck in patterns of interacting and become blind to anything that doesn't fit the patterns. Because we think we know our kids, we cease to really see them. We need to focus on who they are now--not who they were two years ago or two months ago, and not who we think they might be in the future. We need to ask God for eyes to see clearly what is in front of us.
Caution--Reduce Speed
Look beyond the external behavior to the heart.
As parents, we all have the potential to overreact to our kids' behavior and miss the larger issues at hand. If we're not careful and intentional in our prayer life, we can easily overfocus on their external actions and underfocus on the condition of their hearts. This creates a serious risk of legalistically training them to withdraw their truest selves from our gaze. We need to ask God to prevent us from overreacting to outward actions and to give us insight into the heart issues underneath.
Chapter Two
Soul Construction Ahead
Let God change you first.
If we are going to succeed in raising our kids, in guiding or correcting them in any meaningful way, we need to accept that God will want to change us first. His principle of transformation almost always involves working with the leaders before he moves on to everyone else. In the parenting world, that means parents first, kids second. If we want to see real changes in our kids and our marriages, we must grow beyond the stagnant patterns of our personal comfort and convenience.
Detour around Fear
Be motivated by love, not fear.
To help our children grow to love and follow God for a lifetime, first we have to back away from our predisposition to live out of fear and learn to follow Christ out of love. Fear is not a healthy way to raise families. It forces us to behave frantically whenever things start to feel out of our control. When fear rules us, we are actually stepping out of our God-given role as parents and beginning to play God in our kids' lives. That kind of approach will mess things up for them and for us.
Learning to follow Christ out of love will change every dynamic of our lives. This motivational shift is essential if we are ever going to grow beyond a cyclical pattern of fear and regret. When fear rules, peace will not be present in our families. Children can see through our carefully constructed Christian masks to the insecure people we really are. Only when we truly accept the love of Christ will we be able to let go of our need to be in charge.
Chapter Three
Proceed with Grace
Develop a deep understanding of grace, and reject the guilt that comes from "earned faith."
To successfully move forward with your kids, you will need to reconcile with your past. No baggage is healthy, especially when we drag it into our families' lives. For many of us, that baggage is a deep history of living with guilt as the crux of our relationship with God. Believing in "earned faith" at any level will corrupt the pure strength of the gospel, leaving us heavily burdened with guilt when things go wrong. We must embrace grace wholeheartedly, admitting that we can do nothing to earn it.
No "Lone Ranger" Parenting
Seek unity in your marriage and your parenting.
Marriage and parenting require unity to succeed. When one parent is isolated from the other, you sabotage your ability to accurately understand and respond to your kids' needs. If one parent with a dominant personality crowds out the influence of the other, you're in great danger of making some huge mistakes.
God's design for parenting includes a team: a husband and a wife. If you disrupt that design and substitute your own, it will have disastrous consequences. If you are a single parent, your need for counsel and assistance is greatly increased, and you should seek wisdom from God and from your community of faith. To fill this gap, prayerfully consider allowing a family friend to play a larger role in giving your child the support and encouragement that would normally come from a second parent.
Prayer Zone
Devote yourselves to prayer.
For parents, praying over and for your family is not an optional exercise. Only through prayer and time in the Word can the Holy Spirit guide us to the best ways to reach our kids.
Chapter Four
Stop Faking It
Don't be satisfied with behavior modification in your kids. Seek heart transformation.
Behavior modification does not produce authentic faith. Outward disciplines without inward change create cynical and disingenuous adults. Instead, our goal is to introduce our children to the immeasurable love of God and then let him do the work of transforming their lives.
Junction Ahead
Demonstrate love to your kids through spending time with them.
To effectively transfer faith from one generation to another, parents must demonstrate genuine love to their kids. Time is the universal language of love. When we say we love our kids but are too busy for them, we become hypocrites. If that trend is not changed, we will undermine our parenting messages of faith and weaken our children's respect for and trust in God. Seek ways to reconnect with your kids, and make family time a true priority in your schedule.
Merge Real Faith with Real Life
Be authentic. Model for your kids what a real--not perfect--relationship with God can look like.
Authenticity is nonnegotiable if we wish to see our children embrace our faith. We all know what it means to live two separate lives. If our Sunday faith doesn't affect our Monday behavior, then we have a problem. Living authentically does not mean being a perfect Christian example to our kids, but it does require us to respond to their criticisms honestly and admit when we mess up.
God's path for your family may be significantly different from anyone else's. And that's okay. Resist the urge to pattern your family after someone else's.
Remember, formulas will not work in the long term. Neither will reliance on our own plans and preparation. We must find our source of wisdom and strength in the promises of God's Word, not in the confidence of our own understanding. God has designed a divine strategy, a customized road map for every family, and it is essential that we discover it for ourselves and apply its insights to our kids.
No matter how dark or difficult the family situation we're facing, we need to hold on to the promise that God is working and that he can do more than we ever dreamed--for his honor and glory. When you're discouraged, keep this verse at the forefront of your mind: "Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen" (Ephesians 3:20-21, ESV).
May God richly bless you . . . as we all seek to keep our families safe on the road to true life.
