transcendr

I’m having a dilemma of sorts.

This week I’m turning 35, and I realize as I sit at a Panera Bread in a town I don’t know (but will work in), that my parenting skills quite possibly suck. It doesn’t help that today is exactly the date that my adoptive boys have been home for FIVE months, that I have a household of four boys and a soon to be adopted daughter, and that I just might need to pull my head out of my ass long enough to develop a father-child gameplan.

I came to this disheartening revelation in something as holy (at least in theory) as a Bible study that I just started attending a few weeks ago. We were talking about where God “fits” into our level of things that we desire daily, and we had all come to the conclusion that He’s woefully low on the list. (As a quick aside, we’ve been reading Don Miller’s incredible book, “Blue Like Jazz“.) And while we all gave our deeply theological answers as to why that is, I blurted out something like, “What do our lives teach our kids about the character of God?” I don’t even know where that came from, but there it was. And by the disdainful look I got from everyone around the table (which was akin to as if I’d thrown a rotting fish on our breakfast table), I’d hit a sore subject. 

Here’s what I mean. 

My first-born son needed a spanking last night (yeah, we are a corporal punishment kind of family - and there are several reasons why). So, after he received his “fair share”, he was crying. And I’m OK with a little crying. Spankings aren’t fun events for anyone. And he yelled at himself for crying. I looked at him, and just wondered aloud why he thought it was necessary to stop himself from crying. His answer crushed my heart: “I want to show you that I’m brave.” Not the response I was looking for.

What message did I send to my little boy that made him think he had to be brave for me???

And the thought that I had almost a week ago thundered back into my head: “What do our lives teach our kids about the character of God?” I am struggling with this thought. It’s haunting me this week. He and I are going to spend some time together this weekend.

Just the two of us. 

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