Chapter 7: The Freedom To Be Different

Can you tell it’s crunch time? I need to finish this book pronto so Craig can have his turn reading it. Three quotes for tonight:

Page 140, “Grace must be quantifiable. To talk about grace, sing about grace, and have our children memorize verses about grace—but not give them specific gifts of grace—is to undermine God’s work of grace in their hearts.”

Page 141, “We take things that are huge to children and trivialize them, or we take small issues and magnify them out of proportion.”

Page 142, “When we elevate an arbitrary Christian behavior above the best interests of a child’s heart, we’ve clearly lost our way. There’s no other explanation for it.”

Wow, ouch, wow, ouch, wow. Good words.

Chapter 6: A Delivery System For Grace

Short chapter this time. I have one quote and one great visual. First the quote:

“There’s nothing graceful about a life of license. If anything, a licensed life is the shortcut people take if they really want to speed up their personal destruction.”

Now the visual (and really, the quality of my picture isn’t what I’m talking about here, rather the diagram itself):

In case you can’t see it clearly, he’s woven together the concepts of instilling in our kids a secure love, a significant purpose, and a strong hope with the tenants of parenting our kids with four freedoms: to be different, to be vulnerable, to be candid, and to make mistakes.

Chapter 5: A Strong Hope

Tim Kimmel titled chapter five, A Strong Hope, and he does a great job here of explaining why it’s important, how we can build it, and how we so easily destroy it in our children. On page 95 he says, “Anything—minus hope—equals nothing. Hope is the human equivalent of oxygen when it comes to a person’s ability to live effectively.”

He tells us, “Grace is the key because grace is a by-product of hope, and hope is a by-product of grace. Let’s remind ourselves of what grace is. In simple terms, grace is receiving something we don’t deserve but desperately need,” and “Unfortunately, parental negligence-whether intentional or unwitting-can set a child up to struggle with hopelessness and feelings of inadequacy for a lifetime.”

Kimmel devotes a lot of time cautioning the over-protective parent. He says that parents who run their children’s lives and make most of their decisions discourage them from individual thinking which can damage their ability to learn to lean on God. He perfectly describes many of the parents Craig has encountered during his two years at a Christian school as well as many of the homeschooling parents I’ve “run into” on blogs and such. On page 113 he says, “raising safe Christian kids is a spiritual disaster in the making. Your effort will produce shallow faith and wimpy believers. Kids raised in an environment that stresses safety are on track to be evangelical pushovers. They will tend to end up either overly critical of the world system to the point where they won’t want anything to do with the people in the world system-an idea that comes directly from Satan’s playbook. Or, they will become naïve about the world system, which ultimately makes them putty in Satan’s hands. He chews up these kinds of people like they are spiritual McNuggets and swallows them whole. When they’re finally confronted with the full thrust of the world system as young adults, few know how to turn it into an opportunity for spiritual impact.”

And I thought his swimming analogy on page 120 was very good: “To many Christian parents, the idea of developing their children’s faith is like teaching them to swim on the living room rug. They don’t want them to learn how to swim in water because they could drown. So these children don’t really learn how to live out a strong, adventurous faith; they just know how to go through the motions.”

My defensiveness begins to kick in a bit while reading this chapter in that it almost sounds as though Kimmel is saying anyone who sends their kids to Christian schools or who homeschools is guilty of this over-parenting phenomenon. Again, I don’t really think that’s what he’s saying, but it is rather easy to read that into his text. As with anything (everything!), this is a parent’s decision based on what they believe is the right decision for their family given their circumstances and their leading from the Lord. I’ve known good and bad examples to spring forth from all possible schooling decisions: home, Christian, public, non-Christian private. It is so much less about the educational environment and so much more about the families themselves, the parents themselves. And I think really Kimmel says that too.

I loved what he said on page 112 about grooming our children according to their natural bents. It is impossible to print out a list of how to raise a child and have it work for every child. It isn’t hard to see how individuals are so different from one another. Aren’t children individuals too? Even with the things about children that are “different” he says, “We can’t make these liabilities disappear, but we are to raise them in such a way that we account for them and give them tools to help process them properly.”

Chapter 4: A Significant Purpose

It’s been a while, I know. I’m trying to finish this book, so I expect I’ll be posting here more as I get through it over the next couple of weeks…

The fourth chapter in Grace-Based Parenting by Tim Kimmel reminds us of, “a deep longing in the heart of every child to ‘make a difference.’ They were hard-wired by God to want to do more than take up space and suck up air. They weren’t born to be common denominators or mere faces in the crowd” (page 69).

He went on to list all kinds of different families who blunt potential in children: tyrannical, preoccupied, indifferent, lazy. On page 70, he says, “Our children deserve better. God has left us as stewards of our children’s gifts and skills.” I was taken by this idea of being a steward of the girls’ gifts, skills, minds, emotions, etc. It isn’t enough to simply provide the information they need, to present it. I need to be engaging with them in all these areas. I need to help steer them here.

This chapter so deeply emphasizes helping our children develop a sense of significant purpose and drive in life I think it almost sounds like a Lynne Spears type of endorsement. On page 75 he says, “In the bigger scheme of life, it is more important that we help our children reach their potential than it is to see our own dreams come true. Many parents aren’t willing to make that sacrifice, but those who are often find that they gain much more in the end.” I think Lynne Spears would agree. In her own words her goal was to “help her children make their dreams come true.” I think there is definitely a danger in teaching kids that the only thing that matters is their happiness and their dreams. To be sure, I don’t believe Kimmel is condoning this Spears-type of parenting, as is evidenced later in the chapter, but this one portion did seem to lean in that direction.

Back to the idea of helping to steward the potential of our children’s gifts, Kimmel reminds us on page 77 that, “Children embrace what is modeled far more than what they are told. Our good advice carries clout only when it is consistent with our example.” This, combined with his words on 92, “For good or for ill, we play the biggest role in determining what kind of a difference they will ultimately make,” really punched me right in the stomach. I’m all about good intentions with my kids. I question my own follow-through. There is so much I want them to embrace yet I don’t know if I’m fully embracing it myself. I’m constantly telling my kids their actions speak louder than their words. Kimmel is now telling this to me. I need to hear it. I need to hear it every day.

He talked about the importance of regularly affirming our kids by reminding us of the cause and effect between encouragement and confidence (page 83). He said, “Affirmation catches your children doing things right. It notices when they do things you know don’t come easy to them.” Why is it so much harder to remember to point out the good? I do this sometimes, but I don’t do it nearly as often as I point out the flaws. I need to implement the 3-for-1 principle where for every critique there are three compliments. Maybe I would be more careful about how often I critique…

Then, on page 89, Kimmel says, “It’s hard to build a significant purpose into people we aren’t paying careful attention to. It’s our attention to the finer details that tells them how much they truly matter to us. Our gracious God is a God of details. He knows how many hairs are on our heads. He’s interested in us because we are fascinating to Him. Children who get the same treatment from their parents – the same treatment that their parents get from God – grow up feeling significant. A deep sense of significance makes it a lot easier for them to find their purpose and to live it out.”

Simply being present in the home with my kids does not mean I’m paying careful attention. The challenge I have is to not check out on my own family while I’m sitting right here in the same room. I want my kids to grow up knowing I was present, available, aware. I want to know the details, not because I snooped around long enough to find them, but because they were offered to me and I accepted.

Needed for Today

Proverbs 8:14
I have counsel and sound wisdom; I have insight; I have strength.

Amen

Psalm 28

“To you, O Lord, I call; my rock, be not deaf to me, lest, if you be silent to me, I become like those who go down to the pit. Hear the voice of my pleas for mercy, when I cry to you for help, when I lift my hands toward your most holy sanctuary…The Lord is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts, and I am helped; my heart exults, and with my song I give thanks to him.” Psalm 28: 1-2, 7

True, the bulk of my Bible reading has been in the context of reading to the girls lately. I’ve really been trying to be more intentional about making even that time mean something to me. By that I simply mean I’m trying not to read it simply for the sake of checking it off, but for true devotional reading. There have been some good thoughts from that time, but the problem with that is there isn’t time for me to write about it or reflect. I have to take what I can get these days.

Today needed something more. Here was my something more. Still plodding away here, wishing this discipline, as well as the other disciplines I struggle with would get easier already. But as they aren’t, I’m resolving myself to a long journey ahead of constant struggle. Maybe one day I will reach the top of this hill and enjoy the process of leisurely walking back down. Until then, I grab my water bottle and I hike.

Oh Yes, That Counts Too

I’m so busy beating myself up because I’ve not had what you would classify as an official “Quiet Time” by those who are members of the official Quiet Time Police, that I forget that I am reading the Word more often than I’m not. Usually it is in the context of reading it to the girls and not really devotional reading, but input is input, right? Tell me I’m right.

Yesterday I did get up and have an official quiet time. Somebody put a sticker on my chart. I started in Exodus which I really really really want to love and understand. Right now, though, it seems I’m just reading it so I can check it off on the Bible reading plan (and yes, if you keep score, you will notice Exodus comes in like February of most Bible reading plans and really it is August, so I’ve obviously not been following the plan very closely). So take the sticker back off my chart.

Anyway, I’m still here to admit that this is a struggle for me. It just might always be. But I will keep trying. It just might come during odd hours of the day when I’m surrounded by four young folks and trying to keep their attention while reading through the book of John. Bless that time, Lord. For them and for me.