Wednesday, October 12, 2016

parenting manuals

I think the hospital staff forgot to give me the parenting manual after I left with my firstborn child. Detailed instructions would have been nice! 

But nope: just handed me my kid, strapped in a car seat, and said, "Congratulations on entering the next stage of your life where you will truly understand stress to its fullest capacity as well as long-suffering days, sleepless nights, worry/anxiety/fear all rolled up into one, frustration galore, all enveloped in the craziest joy you have ever felt! Enjoy!"

Ok. Maybe they didn't say that last part. 
Maybe they only said Congratulations.
But they knew...they knew all the rest.

So where are the instructions on each personality trait and strength and weakness and character of each kiddo? 

One of my kiddos beckons me into her room on a regular basis after she should be asleep. Her guilt about something or another has kept her up for hours! And she can't live with it: she must tell me and get it off her chest! (I'm realizing that this is actually a good annoying thing. My kid can't keep her guilt from me! Not yet, anyway.)

So I listen to her admission of guilt, usually accompanied by tears, and as I listen, I'm trying to come up with an appropriate response. She has one particular incident that she comes back to every great once in a while. It haunts her that she didn't make the situation right when she could and now she can't at all. This one has been a toughie.

So we talked about it for a bit. 
I explained that guilt is not a bad thing. We have a conscience for a reason: to help us make good decisions. And guilt comes up when we've made a bad decision. It pokes us and prods us until we decide that we need to make the situation right. In this particular incident, we couldn't make it right with the person so we had to go to the higher power. 

We chatted about asking God for forgiveness. He can heal it all. And He is not a God who desires that we live in guilt. He is a God who wants us to live in gratitude for His forgiveness. I'd much rather live a life of gratitude than live under the heaviness of guilt. 

My girl prayed for forgiveness and then we talked about how any feelings of guilt that might come up after that prayer are not from the Holy Spirit, but from the devil trying to tell her that she's not forgiven, that God could never forgive her, but the devil is a stinkin liar!

We've also discussed many times that when we are sorry for what we've done, true repentance means that we will try very not to do it again. Which, try as we might, we are often repeat offenders. But the amazing thing is that God has unlimited forgiveness.

These lessons that I teach my children: 80%.... nah, 95% of the time God is indirectly (and sometimes directly!) teaching me too. Forgiving myself is difficult. But if I bring it to God, I have to learn to leave it there. 

Oh! And, I was wrong at the beginning of this post. I do have a manual. 
If I delve in often enough and deep enough, God's word has always had an answer for what struggles I have as a mom. He knew what He was doing when He put together the Bible: best parenting manual ever.

KC

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