When our last kid was moving out a few years ago and we stood on the precipice of becoming empty nesters, I asked several of our friends who had gone before me what the secret of successful empty nesting was. Every one of them gave me the same advice: find something—a hobby, a ministry, a shared interest—that you can do together as a couple, which will replace the role of children in your life after they leave your home. We were intentional about finding that thing, and it took a while, but for us it became CESA—the Christian school organization that Grace and I helped found in 2010 and which, a couple of years ago, hired my wife after we sold our family business. We now share the same friends, know the same people, and are mutually dedicated to spreading Christian education across the country and around the world. It’s been a blessing from the Lord.
Except this week, because she is on a work trip with CESA, and for the first time in the 23 years I have been working for Grace Community School, I’m starting the first day of school in an empty house. It’s just Bo, our yellow lab, and me; since he secretly loves her more than he loves me, he’s mopey and not much help. Therefore, I find myself in a pretty reflective mood as we begin another school year, my first year with a full school and an empty house.
As I sit here, alternatively staring at my dog and the wall, I contemplate those other 20 or so years when my house was packed full of noise and distraction that at the time seemed overwhelming and that, just for today, I miss (until I realize I can head to the range and hit golf balls whenever I want).
By God’s grace, we have three girls, young women who love Jesus and are serving him in imperfect but (as of now) consistent lives. They all have their struggles because we live in a broken world, but they are working out their salvation. We learned a great deal from our numerous mistakes and from the few things we did correctly, and God’s grace has encompassed all of it, leading us to this point. As we begin the school year, I thought I’d kick it off with a few of those lessons God taught us along the way. Use what helps you, and ignore what doesn’t.
Next to love, vision is the most important thing a parent can have. The most important thing a parent can do is to have a vision for their children’s future. I’m not talking about envisioning them as a Division 1 athlete, a doctor, or getting into Harvard. It’s fine to casually wish for these things, but if they represent your true vision for your children’s lives, there is a strong likelihood that this will result in toxic behavior that damages your relationship with them. Visions like these are typically rooted more in the parents’ failed aspirations for themselves, coupled with a desire for redemption or a second chance through their kids.
I read a book by psychiatrist Gordon Livingston over the summer. I didn’t agree with everything he said, but I agreed with this: our kids owe us nothing. We brought them into this world; that was our decision. They are a gift from the Lord. We should not raise them in a manner that makes them feel entitled, but we definitely shouldn’t expect them to repay us for feeding and raising them by boosting our egos or fulfilling our dreams. When we ask them to do those things, it’s a misuse and a manipulation of our relationship with them. It’s dysfunctional and unhealthy, and it will most likely breed resentment or further dysfunction later in life.
Instead, our vision for our kids should be driven by who Christ has called them to be. We know what that vision is, because God has revealed it to us in his word—to enter into a relationship with Jesus, to see their life transformed by the Holy Spirit so that the fruit of the Spirit becomes more and more apparent in their lives, to know the ways of the Lord, and to become a person who loves God and other people. They have a unique calling on their lives—different from yours—and God calls us to help them discover that.
The power of vision lies in its ability to drive action. When we see our kids as that kind of person, it changes us. Here’s an example. When I returned home from work each evening, I was similar to many other dads. I had a long and tough day, and I was drained. I wanted nothing more than to plop in front of the TV and watch a ballgame or whatever else was on and just decompress.
But I grew up in a dysfunctional house, and God gave me a greater vision for my kids and my family. And that vision drove me to sit down to dinner with them, then take them upstairs for baths, then roll around on the floor with them, read to them, and pray with them, talking about their day and about how Jesus loves them. There were many nights I didn’t want to do that, but the vision of who they could become was way more potent than seeing whatever Tom Brady or Peyton Manning might have done that night. I failed some nights, to be sure, but this became my trajectory. Having a vision, a divinely inspired vision, is the most powerful tool in your parenting arsenal. What is your vision for your kids’ lives? If you don’t know, be still and quiet and ask the Lord.
Talk less and model more. Many of you know I used to be a practicing attorney. Did you know that lawyers in the UK were once paid by the word for drafting documents? When I was parenting young kids, I acted like that was still true of me. Oh, man, could I talk! I had all kinds of wise advice, things I had read, and good counsel. I look back on it now, and I marvel at how gracious my kids were to listen to me (or pretend to, anyway). As a parent, your actions are ten times more significant than your words in shaping people, building culture, discipleship, teaching, and just about everything else in life.
If you tell your kids one thing and live another way, the odds are astronomically in favor of your kids doing one of two things. They will either live the way they see you live (and you probably don’t want them to), despite what you tell them, or they will live the right way, the way you and others they now respect more are modeling for them, and they will resent you for lacking integrity and being a hypocrite. Neither of these is a good outcome, right?
Paul encourages the Corinthians to “be imitators of me, as I imitate Christ.” (1 Cor. 11:1). That’s the easiest verse in the history of the galaxy to memorize, because the verse is all “1s”. You just have to remember “Corinthians.” It’s also the best parenting verse ever. Christian Smith, a professor and researcher at the University of Notre Dame, who conducted the National Study on Youth and Religion —a multi-decade study on youth and religion—concluded that, essentially, we get who we are. The most effective way to pass our faith on to the next generation is to actually be the people of faith we want our children to become. If that’s not you right now, the greatest way to change your kids’ future reality is to change your current one.
Almost every parenting decision I made out of fear was a bad one. I recall yelling at my kids to get out of the street when cars came, and once or twice, running out to get them. Those were just about the only parenting decisions I ever made, driven by fear, that were good ones. Every other one, like choosing activities for them I knew they probably wouldn’t like or be good at because I thought not doing it might disadvantage them compared to other kids; or stepping into a conflict one of my children was having with another kid rather than simply trying to coach them through it because I was afraid they couldn’t handle it themselves; or trying to rescue them with their schoolwork once or twice because I was afraid to let them fail, turned out to be a bad mistake.
There is a great deal of poor parenting out there. Much of it is driven by fear: fear that our kids will fail, fear that they won’t measure up to the other kids, fear that they won’t be successful (usually using measures of success that are practically meaningless by God’s standards), or some fear for their safety that we’ve let the culture around us inflate in our minds to the point that we’ve become those bubble-wrap parents that we swore we’d never be. Yet, here we are.
1 John 4:18 is another great parenting verse. It says, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear.” I wish I had memorized that one earlier, because that one empowered me so that every time I felt fear, I stopped myself and asked, “How do I show the perfect love of Jesus here instead? If Jesus loves my kid more than I do, and my job is not to guarantee success but to equip them as Jesus-followers for the complexities of life, what do I need to do here?” The parenting decisions that followed, such as letting them fail, coaching them through friend issues, and not letting comparison rob my joy (or theirs) of who God made them to be, were much better parenting decisions than the fear-based ones.
As you race through the chaos of the first days of school, I hope you’ll have a chance to stop for a moment, pray, and ask the Lord for a vision for the school year and beyond. Who does he want your kids to be? Who does he want to see in you, and what do you need to do to become
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