* This article is now complete and will be pulished by Boundless and the Association of Marriage and Family Ministiries. I have posted it under the Articles link.
** Below is a rough draft. I am posting it for feedback. Please feel free to point out what is good and bad, what you would like to hear more or less of, where you think it is off or on. Thanks in advance!
From a distance, parenthood looks like 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]
However, close-up encounters with parents reveal that maturity doesn’t go hand in hand with motherhood or fatherhood, even if the mother and father are 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 result 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 both to mother and father.
The challenges of parenthood begin before our 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 parenthood. 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 frustration. While I trembled at the thought of guiding and providing for our second before she was born, afterwards I found myself incredibly annoyed and frustrated with her incessant crying. Responsible fear is easily turned into selfish frustration, and questions begin to cascade from our minds. 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 and invalid? 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.
As I continue to post on Jones’ Embodying Forgiveness, I will share various reflections sparked by the book, quotations, and questions for further conversation. One question that is central to Jones’ thesis is this: Does Jesus in his teachings and actions concerning issues of repentance, teach and emobdy a forgiveness that makes too much difference? This is a question we most certainly should turn on ourselves. Does our gospel teach and embody so much forgiveness that it cheapens the sacrifice of the Son?