Parenting is Hard

My son locked our family out of the house this morning. He did it on purpose. He was mad and this was his way of punishing us. This has been the second incident in the past year in which I have realized that parenting doesn’t get easier the older your children get. I’m sure many people have told me this before but you don’t hear what you don’t hear. And usually you don’t truly hear the words and advice of people who are ahead of you in experience until you get to the place where their advice counts.

For me, parenting has been a lesson in what you can’t control. Now truthfully, most of my lessons in life are about control. It seems to be something I crave and yet rarely truly have. None of us do, no matter how much we tell ourselves we do. And it just takes one incident like our child locking us out of the house (and being unsure if you have a spare key and where it might be) to make you realize you have zero control. ZERO. So I sat down at our outdoor patio table with my younger two sons, got them a spin drift from the mini fridge in our backyard and sipped my morning coffee.

I wanted to yell. I wanted to scream. I wanted to break a window and scare him and regain control. But I knew yelling or screaming wouldn’t likely get the results I wanted. And breaking a window would only lead to a lot of clean up that I would have to do and then all the work and money of getting someone out to replace it…So instead we sipped and waited.

Eventually a spare key was found and I entered the house. My son was instantly grounded with a few other consequences as well. All yelling and screaming was done internally and mixed with prayers and thoughts that I was in way over my head. But I didn’t engage my temper. I didn’t cling to control, though I desperately wanted to. And for that I am content.

I seek control daily, in how I raise my children, in how I exercise and what I eat. In how I engage with the world. Often my parenting reactions suffer due to my desire for control, too often. But God didn’t grant me time with these children (or any other people I love) to control them. He is allowing me this time to love and steward them. So for today I’ll celebrate that I had coffee in hand when the sh*t hit the fan.