How to be the Perfect Parent

here

I am laughing at all of you who really thought I would tell you how to be the perfect parent. Or maybe you are laughing at me, just tuning in to see what crazy idea I will come up with next. I promise not to disappoint on the crazy idea.

But are you a good parent? 

Does this question bring that familiar weight of guilt??

There is a strong sub-cultural notion that our most important job (if not our only value to this earth) is our parenting. 

This seems to me to be backward. For the circle of moms and dads I hang with, guilt is the emotion of the hour. Moms especially seem willing to sacrifice everything to the elusive goal of perfect parenting, while the foundational relationship of marriage suffers, and the foundation for all of life is completely ignored.

 There is a strong sub-cultural notion that our most important job (if not our only value to this earth) is our parenting.

Don’t get me wrong. Of course, mothering is incredibly valuable and important. It has often been underrated. The largest part of our culture idealizes children being raised by paid strangers while their own mothers make money to pay for luxuries. Don’t get me started on that stupidity! 

But there is an approach that is attempting to rectify cultural stupidity by creating an imbalance of its own. It is especially prevalent in churches and schools. While attempting to be the good parents, we who should know better fall short of God’s best.

My life is not about parenting

My life is not about parenting. Does this surprise you?? It surprises most people I meet, and they make comments about how much I am… myself.  Even though I have more kids than anyone you know, I am still called to be me before being a mother or a wife. Even though I home school, and most of my children have more time with me than any other adult, parenting is not my true identity.

My life is about Jesus. About walking with and obeying Jesus. Although mothering is more noble than my culture will admit, my identity is far greater than mothering.

Who will change the world?

If a person’s life goal just to raise good kids and then when they are grown their job is to raise good kids, and so on, who will change the world?? 

Good kids won’t change the world, especially when their sole spiritual purpose is to look like good parents when they become adults. Unless adults set the example of being the kind of parent who takes the risks of faith, surrendering everything including being the perfect parent (or looking like the perfect parent) at the foot of the cross, our kids may grow to merely look like good people instead of becoming the world changers they were designed to be.

One of the amazing surprises of motherhood is that your children do not become who you diligently teach them to be.

No. I wish.

They become who you are.

Take It from me. I have said before that I have an advantage usually afforded only to grandparents… the chance to see how the seeds I planted look after 20 or so years… but while I still have little ones under my roof. I have the insight of a grandparent while still being a parent.

It’s scary. I mean it

your children do not become who you diligently teach them to be

It can make you (on a bad day) wonder what the heck you ever thought you were thinking of in procreating in the first place. Let me hasten to say that this is not because I am ashamed of my older kids, or because they are failures. Not at all.

The fruit of your life does not lie.

But I see now, more than ever, how my mistakes have hurt them. Specifically, the areas in my life where I did not seek Jesus first, where I did the religious thing instead of the honest, risky, faith-filled thing… those areas? My kids paid the price. No one outside my home saw it coming. I fooled them all with my “my life is about home schooling” schtick. But I did not fool my kids. They knew me better than I knew myself.

Take it from me. The fruit of your life does not lie.

Children make it their life goal to observe their parents in order to make sense of the world.

And while you, dear mother, are committed to staying at home, committed to attending every sports game, committed to never missing a parent-teacher conference, committed to run and pick them up on the playground when they fall down, or whatever culturally decides you to be a superior parent, please remember that it is your relationship with Jesus which will determine what your kids know and believe about Him. Not what you teach them, not even what you so carefully model, but what you truly believe enough to stake your life on.

As you walk with God, there will come a time when He will ask you to do what is culturally unacceptable, what looks like negligent parenting perhaps. Maybe you will have more than two kids in a bedroom, miss a game or a conference, smile and encourage your toddler when he falls down instead of running to pick him up. And those around you may judge you, but when you walk with Jesus you walk outside the camp with Him, bearing His reproach. 

As you walk with God, there will come a time when He will ask you to do what is culturally unacceptable 

And that’s when your parenting becomes about giving your child what they best need to become the person they were truly meant to be… a world changer.

Pharisees maintain the status quo, They have to, in order to look good.

World-changers buck the status quo. They have to, in order to change the world.

Be a parent who is a world changer.