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I have been noticing a trend lately with my two year old: Anything that he does not want that I offer to his baby sister, he regains a sudden interest in. I think God saved the best commandment, the hardest for last: Thou shalt not covet. Its not about evident behavior, its about the heart. It's the latest challenge for me these days.
How do I parent in such a way that I deal with the squishy issues of the heart and motives through the evident behavior? After all I am trying to parent in a way that points above me to something/one higher. It is hard to do with a two year old and not feel like you are being a legalist. You can't make rules about everything.
I'm finding that I get why the pharisees developed so much commentary on the OT. They wanted to make the application clear. That's the deal though. You can't prescribe it.
What I do think kids get much better than my holding their behavior under a microscope, is holding my own. I have had to apologize to my two year old at least half a dozen times now, and that's probably a conservative estimate. Its amazing that I can tell Isaac not to yell in anger, but when I have and apologize, it registers with him.
Its humbling to realize as a parent that probably my best parenting, the lasting impact of my parenting may not be the ways in which I did it right, but modeling how to handle my doing it wrong. What I mean is that my most important lesson to my children is not how to NOT sin and how to be perfect all the time. Its how to repent and have brokenness about my sin. How to both accept my own forgiveness and be a conduit of God's forgiveness to others. That doesn't happen without admitting that my own sin shows up to the party frequently, and allowing my repentance process to be evident to my children.
Boy its been a strange and humbling realization that my biggest impact on my kids might be their watching my failures and how I deal with that. It is the ultimate test of what I really say I believe.
So I hold up a standard to them which neither I nor they can meet, and then hold up the cross. No wonder Jesus says, "I am the vine, you are the branches, he who abides in me and I in him, the same brings forth much fruit. For apart from me, you can do nothing." John 15:5. Jesus, let me walk before my kids in such a way that they see your redemptive work in my life and theirs. Amen.
