“Hear, my son, your father’s instruction and do not forsake your mother’s teaching;
“Indeed, they are a graceful wreath to your head and ornaments about your neck.” – Pr 1.8-9

Parenthood is a double-edged sword: its sharp blade cuts deeply in whatever direction it turns. Those of you who have children – especially post-pubescent ones – likely know this.

Children, once they begin to make their own decisions, hurt us. All of us want our daughters and sons to be spared the painful lessons that we learned. We want them to be wiser than us, to make better choices, and to turn out better.

But they make mistakes, poor choices, and foolish decisions. This is, for the most part, a normal and necessary part of becoming adult: they, too, must learn the hard lessons of life. Personally, I cannot think of a single important lesson I learned when I was young that I did not learn the hard way. By being foolish, I learned to appreciate the value of wisdom.

A smart person, of course, learns from his own mistakes; a wise person learns from the mistakes of others. I know a lot of smart young people, but I don’t know many wise, young people. But we all want our children to be wise, or at least wiser than we were at their age.

The pain is amplified, however, when our children make mistakes without talking to us in the first place. I am not referring to the impulsive, daring choices they sometimes make; I have in mind the more premeditated decisions, the ones they consider and discuss with their friends before going ahead with it. They may tell us about it, but only after the deed is done.

As parents, we do want our children to have wings. We want them to leave the nest and to fly further and higher than we ever did. But, being older and more scarred from life, we know some of the things they will need to do and avoid in order to realize their dreams. We want them to listen to us, to consider what we say, and then to do as they think best.

When we are left out of the loop and informed about things only after the fact, it is a deeper and more painful cut. It feels ragged and infected, as though something went wrong. What should have been a clean, thin scar is suddenly a gaping wound with a long and ugly healing process ahead of it.

As parents, this hurts us more. We feel cut off and marginalized, relegated to the status of an afterthought. We become the emergency room to which our children rush when their foolish, isolated decisions catch up with them. We are left thinking to ourselves, “If only . . .” and “Why did I not . . .” and “Did I fail to . . .”

But this is not the other edge of the sword. The other edge, the one that plunges just as deeply into our hearts is wielded by the Holy Spirit. His cut is deep and clean, but profoundly painful because we understand so much more.

“Your child has hurt you,” He whispers, “but have you not done the same to your heavenly Father?”

He is right, of course. We have done the same thing to Him. Every time we have made our own decisions without discussing it with God first, every time we have treated Him like a cosmic emergency room doctor, every time we let Him know things after the fact – every time we have done that, we have done to Him the very thing that pains us so deeply with our children.

God waits for us to talk to Him, to seek Him, to desire to know His mind before we are foolish. He will have mercy on us when we rush ahead of Him, but He would far rather have us come to Him first so we might learn wisdom. He wants to protect us, even as we want to protect our children.

But we marginalize Him too often, seeking Him only after our choice has been made, realizing too late that we would have been better off had we come to Him first.

As parents, we hope that our children know that we want to help them, not hinder them. We want to impart information and wisdom to them, not wrestle the decision away from them by telling them what to do. We respect them enough to let them make their own choices; we hope they respect us enough to ask for our input.

God wants to help us. He gives wisdom while leaving the decision to us. Do we have enough respect to discuss it with Him before the choice is made?


2 Cor 1:13