Most of the time, I think I tend to be a pretty patient mom. Even the kids will tell you that I’m usually patient. (“Yeah, you’re just crabby sometimes.”) Sometimes, being patient isn’t very hard. Other times—like when I’m tired or annoyed, or when I’ve had a long day—my patience wears thin. I can still vividly remember an incident when I was mad about something else, and poor Ellie (then about two years old) came up to me, trying to get my attention. “What!?” I snapped, totally out of line. Ellie burst into tears.
I immediately dropped to my knees and hugged her, apologizing more than once. “Mommy’s so sorry, Ellie,” I said. “You didn’t do anything wrong. I shouldn’t have yelled at you. Will you forgive me?” She clung to me and said she would forgive me, but it took me much longer to forgive myself.
I had been completely ungracious and unloving in my response, and I felt terrible.
We’ve all been there. We’ve all yelled, or been impatient, or done something else that was uncalled for and hurt our precious child’s feelings, despite the fact that we love our children deeply and forever. Somehow, instead of offering grace, we’ve all delivered unkindness, whether our behavior is the exception to the rule or is, tragically, the rule.
I’m sure glad God offers me more grace than I sometimes offer my kids. When I think about what my life would be like if He only showed me the same measure of grace I show my children, I shudder. I don’t want His unkindness to be unpredictable or capricious—which it isn’t, because He’s never unkind. I desperately need His grace to be constant and overflowing, no matter what I do—which it is.
Even though I want to offer my children this kind of grace, I’ll probably never reach that goal this side of heaven. But I’ve learned that instead of berating myself when I mess up, or, worse yet, making excuses for my sin, I should use the occasions of my failure as reminders of God’s incredible grace to me. Yes, I absolutely should confess my sins against my children both to them and to God, and I should make every effort, under the Holy Spirit’s direction, to repent of my sins and treat my kids differently. But I should also take it a bit farther and allow my failures to turn me in humble gratitude toward the One Who never fails, despite the fact that I’ve sinned against Him far more than my children have sinned against me.
Will you do that with me? This week, when we treat our kids wrongly, let’s not only make it right, let’s thank God for being perfect in grace and abounding in mercy. Let’s ask Him to change our hearts to make us like Him in this way. And then, let’s go hug those precious children and pour out our love on them instead of our anger. After all, that’s how our Father treats us.
Matthew 18:32-33—“I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?”