Simple and Profound (Parenting Advice)

The best parenting advice for every stage of parenting was somehow lost on me in all the counsel I received and books I read over the years. I wish I had made the connection sooner than these latter years. I regret complicating the joy of nurturing a soul and building relationship with long lists of good (and not-so-good) mandates, rather than dwelling on the foundation given to us by our creator– the designer of our souls, personalities, and complexities. 

So what is the BEST parenting advice?

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Simple and profound. Dwell on these two commandments alone and strive to obey; every other biblical directive fits within these. The latest parenting strategies or religious rule-books for behavior modification miss the mark entirely. Our children are not projects for us to put on display, or people for us to fix, or characters to be molded and carved into images that affirm our pride.

Just as in Jesus's day, the experts and the most educated failed to see the point. We all like to complicate things – maybe add to what we deem too simple, or take away from what we think unnecessary – and we craft a system of our own. We are by nature driven to serve our own desires through our own means. It's a sneaky trap, even to those who desire to please and honor the Lord.

So I must ask myself:
Is my love for the Lord what informs and fuels my love for others?
Is my affection for the Savior true and apparent to my kids, or is it merely lip service?
Do my children think/feel that I view them as lesser-than?
Do they think they must earn my love and approval?
Do I actually view them as "neighbors" and fellow recipients of grace?
Is the theme of our relationship compassionate, tender love that promotes the well-being of another; or is it the domination and subjection of one to the other?
What would my children answer to these?

I am not able to attain to the greatest commandments which were delivered through the law and the prophets, and then succinctly summarized by Jesus. Not even close. But in Christ, with the help of the Holy Spirit, we can attain with increasing measure. And because we inevitably fail, we get to point our children to God the Father who parents us both perfectly, with perfect love and tender regard. He will do for them what we cannot. I have failed many, many times. I certainly don't claim to have mastered anything at all. Daily, I sin in acts of omission and commission; I know it, my children know it, and God knows it. There's no secret there.

But all is not lost. Failure keeps pointing us back to God, who never fails and will never fail us. He is the ultimate Parent.

If you want to please God, and if you want to parent well, then Matthew 22:37-39 is the best place to start. Meditate on it. Let it be your main objective and allow its simple framework to inform your decisions and practices.

It's going to be my guiding principle for parenting as I move forward: With the help of the Spirit, I want to love God with my whole being, and love others the way I love myself (or need/needed to be loved). My humanness can only handle simple with regards to directives, but our hearts need profound. The beauty of the first and second greatest commandments is that they display our need for the Gospel (the ultimate simple and profound), which is equally needed by both parent and child.

Does this parenting advice promise to be easy or to "work" by producing saved kids? Nope. Don't trust anyone or any material that makes any claims of "working" at all.

Because we can't look to your own efforts to save, only to Christ. It's ALL by the GRACE of God.

~Katherine