The other side to that hideous truth is that when our children make poor, wrong, or sinful choices it is so easy for us to fall on the side of pride yet again. We wear their sinful choices as a reflection of our parenting and we grow bitter toward them when the reflection doesn’t look as pretty as we’d like it to. This creates such an imbalanced atmosphere of parents feeding their pride with the behavior of their children.
Pride is a vicious sin. It fills us with such a false security about who we are and it has us believing lies that we’ve accomplished things in our own strength…apart from God. God’s Word tells us that pride comes before the fall, but I believe it often lingers long after we fall as well. Pride is a double-edged sword. It stokes the embers of our arrogance and our ego when we believe we have it all together, but it relentlessly drives its dagger into our broken spirit every time we fall.
PRIDE IS A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD. IT STOKES THE EMBERS OF OUR ARROGANCE AND OUR EGO WHEN WE BELIEVE WE HAVE IT ALL TOGETHER, BUT IT RELENTLESSLY DRIVES ITS DAGGER INTO OUR BROKEN SPIRIT EVERY TIME WE FALL.
Failure is inevitable in parenting…and the seeds of regret, anger, and humiliation are often sown in those fragile failure moments. Most often, our natural inclination is to sit idly by allowing pride to continue raining down on the soil…reaping a bitter harvest we never intended to reap. I wish I could say that humility had been my initial fortress in moments of fear or failure…but it wasn’t then and it isn’t now. It’s still pride I run to first and it’s often a slow crawl back to humility.
Fortunately for me, and maybe for you as well, God gives grace to the humble. He pours out grace in response to our humility, whether humility comes immediately or whether it is delayed. I am the one who chooses how long I allow the seeds of fear and failure to grow under pride’s lingering rainfall. I can choose to water my failures with pride or I can choose to water them with humility. I can choose a harvest of bitterness or I can choose a harvest of grace.
I’m still learning how to choose humility and how to accept God’s grace in the midst of my many parenting failures. Motherhood has shone a floodlight on my failures and my sinful pride despite what any head knowledge offered me as a pat on the back in the early years. Truth be told, I still don’t know what I’m doing…but I trust the God who does. God knows the hearts and souls of my children far better than I ever will.
Parenting requires humility and it requires grace…and the only time you are genuinely failing as a parent is when those things are absent in your life. Humility chases hard after God and His wisdom. So today…23 years into this journey…I’m committing yet again to the purposeful work of deep watering the soil of my relationships with my children with humility. Then I am going to sit back and watch in eager anticipation for God’s harvest of grace.
