
Parenting can seem like a matter of formulas to the inexperienced. Raise a child a certain way, teach them good values and ta-da! A healthy and well adjusted adult eighteen years later. As our baby’s due date draws closer, I can’t help but dream of how we’re going to raise him to be the kind of man people can depend on. It doesn’t often occur to me that I could do everything “right” and still wind up with a son who is a drug addict, or who cheats on his wife, or is just plain intolerant or judgmental. He may even walk away from the faith that Sam and I hold to.
Leslie Leyland Fields writes on Christianity Today:
“Children are not tomatoes to stake out or mules to train, nor are they numbers to plug into an equation. They are full human beings wondrously and fearfully made. Parenting, like all tasks under the sun, is intended as an endeavor of love, risk, perseverance, and, above all, faith. It is faith rather than formula, grace rather than guarantees, steadfastness rather than success that bridges the gap between our own parenting efforts, and what, by God’s grace, our children grow up to become.”
Her article deflates the myth of the perfect parent and is worth persevering with even if you’re not into the God stuff (it’s seven pages long!). If anything, it’s a healthy balance to the endless parenting guides out there. I personally found this part helpful:
“It is likely that we are asking the wrong questions as parents. We are so focused on ourselves—on our own need for success and the success of our children—that we have come to view parenting as a performance or a test...We cannot pass this test, I’m afraid, nor could we ever. If we are graded on a curve, we will always find parents and children who are more obedient, more joyful, and more peaceful than we are. We will find parents whose children turned out better than ours, parents with a higher percentage of “spiritual champions” than we can claim for our efforts.
If we are graded instead on an absolute scale—as I believe we are—we fail even more miserably. But this is why a Savior was provided, and gifted to us through grace, through faith—”and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (Eph. 2:8-9). If even our ability to believe in God is given to us by God, then how much of parenting can we perform on our own? We must proceed, then, on our knees first, beggars before the throne, if we are to parent well.”