HEART blog-post for book club by Rachael Carman
Chapter 3
A-Accept Your Kids
It cannot be anything but providence that in just the last two days I have had conversations (and subsequently prayer) with parents who are having a difficult time accepting their children. Both wrestling with God’s plan and purpose for their kids. Both sure that God must be punishing them. Both questioning God’s ability to show them how to proceed. Both doubting they are going to survive the teenage years.
These conversations reminded me again of my own struggle to accept my own first born. I remember being shocked and ashamed when I realized that even through I loved Charles given that he was my son, I didn’t like him. He was difficult and defiant, disobedient and discouraging. I wanted to enjoy our days together, but I felt like I spent most of them disciplining him and at night I would cry myself to sleep feeling like a complete failure.
Now all these years later, I can still remember the anxiety of those days. I am grateful for those years, those battles, those trials, God’s strength, patience and mercy. I have since seen God’s faithfulness in a myriad of ways. On this side, I am overwhelmed by grace.
God taught me so many things through those trials, things about Charles, about me and about Himself. I learned that Charles is like me and not like me; he is his own person and that person is passionate and strong. I learned that I didn’t have it all together even though I thought I did. But God loved me anyway and He wanted me to want His will in my life and not my own. And I learned that God is God and I am not, that He alone is worthy, He is able and He is my answer. At the end of the day accepting my children meant accepting God as God.
