How not to cheat your kids
A wake-up call
Disclaimer: When I started blogging in 2023 this was my very first post. I didn’t bring it over when I moved here to Substack, partly because it’s not that much fun to revisit my own failures. But sharing them to help someone else avoid them is the best possible use for my discomfort. So here goes.
This is going to be painful for me to admit.
In all fairness, my head was not on straight before we had kids. Despite church being an important part of our family life, I spent little time striving to know God, and almost no time trying to make Him known. This means, of course, that I was missing entirely the two primary reasons I was created. I don’t recall ever hearing the phrase “it’s not a religion, it’s a relationship,” but if I did, I was immune to the message. I was about checking off the rule boxes, for the most part. With that as my mindset, it’s not surprising I went off course.
I decided our focus should be first and foremost on our children. Their protection, education, well-being and success were not to be threatened in any way. Re-read that last sentence. Do you see anything wrong with my outlook? I certainly did not, at the time. It’s what good parents do.
I was up for this challenge. Not being a fan (then or now) of government-run schools, we decided to homeschool. Had I done this to build a richer, more flexible family life so we could more effectively serve the Kingdom, that would have been an excellent strategy. But my reasons for homeschooling, although good reasons in and of themselves, eventually led me to believe that my children would suffer if I stopped homeschooling.
This idea led directly to other decisions. Decisions that, looking back, grieve my heart. My husband was offered numerous opportunities to advance his career by moving overseas for periods of time. But I would not hear of it – many of those countries did not tolerate homeschooling, and I was not going to send them to some foreign school where I’d have even less control. So, I cheated my kids – cheated all of us – out of the incredibly life-enriching opportunity to live and work and learn in another culture (not to mention sabotaging my husband’s career).
People often mock homeschoolers for isolating their children, but that’s not true in most cases. All kinds of activities, sports, and even classes are available to children learning at home. My kids interacted with lots of people. But I now deeply regret that they didn’t get to interact with one individual, in particular.
Despite my weak prayer life and sparse time in the Word, God gave me a big nudge one day when I saw a local TV newscast profiling a young boy looking for a family to adopt him. The child was within a year of the age of our son. His story profoundly gripped my heart to the point where, as the story ended, I sat in tears. Our son, present in the room, asked why didn’t I just go adopt him?
Good question. Why didn’t we? Because I knew that kids who’ve been in foster care are likely to have been exposed to things that I did not want my children exposed to. That’s it. I would not threaten their well-being by bringing “that” (whatever it was) into our home.
A legitimate concern, right? But I didn’t leave any room for seeking God’s will on this, trusting His care for the situation, or even making a call or two to find out more about this boy. I just shut down my heart and moved on, cheating my children of the chance to see Christ’s love in action – if only by the act of pursuing the possibility. And, had it worked out, they were cheated of a chance to multiply the love in our family.
I think about this boy often. He would be in his 30s now.
As mentioned, my children were in lots of activities, because that was part of my formula for the perfect family. Our son played all the sports, and joined a little league football team when he was old enough, as my husband had been a gifted athlete. Our daughters had ballet and ice skating lessons. And here, my “off course” went way off course.
One daughter showed immense talent for skating and progressed incredibly rapidly. Coaches offered to teach her for free (at first). It was clear to everyone that she had something special, and I felt that we simply must do everything in our power to let her develop this gift. A series of circumstances led to her being accepted by a top coach in Colorado Springs, known for its Olympic training center. Our family split up so she could train there; my husband stayed behind in our hometown, working to support us.
Once in Colorado, at first our decision seemed justified. Almost every family training there was from someplace else, and many families were physically separated to allow their “star” child to train. And our daughter’s skating talent blossomed at warp speed – just a couple of years after first donning skates, she medaled at a U.S. Figure Skating regional championship and became one of a few dozen skaters competing at the youngest division at the junior national championships. With that kind of success, I couldn’t just pick up and move the family back to our hometown and husband, now could I?
It probably wouldn’t surprise you, if you thought about it, to learn that fractured families and divorce are rampant in families where everything is sacrificed so a child can fulfill an Olympic dream. Our family barely held on through several years of being apart – during which our children were cheated out of years with their father’s immediate love and influence (not to mention their father being cheated of time with them).
Waking up is hard to do
Turning to God in response to the pain and strained relationships this situation created, I finally woke up. This is when I do recall hearing someone explain that our life with God is a relationship, not a religion. I had thought that splitting the family was our “big mistake” – and a big mistake it was. But I eventually realized I hadn’t been on track for a long time before that, as I remembered other missteps like those detailed here. I realized that if you are not first pursuing a relationship with your Creator, you are going to blow it. You are going to miss out on years of getting to know Him better, and years of getting to make Him known. You are going to miss out on the adventures He has prepared for you as you take your place helping build His Kingdom.
One of the authors who helped get me on track was Francis Chan, whose book Crazy Love showed me what life should look like for a believer – what it means to be a disciple for the Kingdom. In 2013 he was asked how he would challenge the Western church – and what he said resonated deeply within me, as I recognized myself in his words. Christians are familiar with the concept of something being an idol in their life – something that becomes more important than God. Chan stated that in Western culture many of us are idolizing our families. What does that mean?
It means that once we have children, we focus on them more than anything. We tell ourselves we are not in a “season” of life where we can do much of anything else – we are too busy, too consumed with our family life, our kids, and their activities (their activities run most family schedules). We tell ourselves we will serve God and spend more time with Him later, when the kids are older.
Making these excuses for our lack of attention to Kingdom pursuits, we turn our attention to creating the best version of the American Dream we can afford (or sometimes not afford), a nice house in a nice neighborhood with a nice school, where the kids (and we parents) will be safe. That’s the most important thing, right? Safety. Providing for and protecting the children. Keeping all the bad people away.
But – where do we find that in the Bible? Well, we really don’t.
The Bible is strangely mute on strategies for protecting our physical safety. There are no verses about finding a good neighborhood, or security systems we should install. But there are countless verses on Who provides our safety and security, and how we can walk in that. (Ephesians 6:11-18 is a favorite passage, but there are many more.)
There is also clear instruction about raising children, including the oft-quoted Proverbs 22:6, which says to train them in the way they should go. Does that mean haul them to Sunday school each week? Yes. Does it mean read them a Bible storybook and tuck them in with prayers each night? Yes. If we check off a few boxes like this, are we good? No.
As with all learning, the best way to impart “the way they should go” is to live “the way they should go.” So, the first question we should ask ourselves is not about what we should be doing with the kids. It’s about what we should be doing. You and I are here to follow Jesus, to be His disciples and do the good works He prepared beforehand for us (Ephesians 2:10). We are invited to take part in the greatest adventure a human can experience – helping God build His kingdom! Surrendering to that mission is literally living our best lives.
That mission should be our mindset when we are 20 and seeking God’s guidance for our lives. It should be our mindset if we find someone with the same vision and mission and then marry that person. It should be our mindset even if children join our family. “Kingdom first” is our whole life mission, calling, and privilege.
And that involves – are you sitting down? It involves risk. You will possibly be called to involve yourself and/or members of your family in situations you cannot fully control, around people you cannot control.
Surprise! That last paragraph is actually a description of life in general. Only God is in control of situations and people. So, we can spend our lives trying to provide the greatest protection for our families (pro tip: God doesn’t need our help for this). Or we can spend our lives fulfilling the mission to which He’s called us. Either way we’re not in control, but in the second scenario we are walking so much more closely with Him that our lives are immeasurably enriched.
What about the children?
If our family life is stagnating in the first scenario, where the emphasis is all on “us” – our family, our home, our activities – what are we teaching our children? We are teaching that life is not about going out into the harvest and being a worker. We are teaching that life is all about the American Dream, and the Kingdom is merely something we talk about on Sundays, with little thought to our part in it. They watch and learn as we spend more time and money trying to protect and please them than we spend on the Kingdom.
We take such good care of them, in fact, that we never put our families in a position where we rely on God to come through for us. They are cheated of the opportunity to experience living by faith, to experience the power of the Holy Spirit in day-to-day living. They are cheated of the adventure that comes when we fulfill our Kingdom calling – the adventure they see in those Bible storybooks, that bears no resemblance to their actual lives.
And when they grow up, they drift away from a faith that had no substance, and a God they never experienced. How many people are wandering lost even now, because despite growing up in a “Christian home” they never saw God move in their family – never were given the opportunity to serve someone else or participate in something much bigger than themselves?
A better way
So, what does this look like? Must we all pick up our families and move to Africa to be missionaries?
Well – we each must discern our assignments in God’s big adventure. We accomplish that by walking closely enough with Him to hear His voice, by evaluating our pre-conceived notions about what’s appropriate for our current “season” of life, and by evaluating cultural expectations about what is best for our children. The key to knowing God’s will is to spend a lot of time with him, in prayer and Bible study (yes, it always comes back to those two things). Note also that the Bible gives us at least three specific things to do that are God’s will for us (see 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18). That’s a great place to start.
Your Kingdom adventure will look different from anyone else’s. A few families have, in fact, gone to Africa. Others have made short-term missions a family priority. Some have moved their families into inner-city locations where they can serve hurting populations. Some have downsized their home and lifestyle to free more resources for God’s work. Some have quit their jobs to re-focus their family on ministry of some kind. Some have chosen to homeschool so their family can more effectively engage with their community. Some have opened their homes to foster or adopt children. Some have simply said “no” to endless organized kids’ activities to allow their children time to serve with them as a family, with the added benefit of strengthened family relationships.
All these types of changes, when undertaken with a spirit eager to be led by God, will point families and their children away from the world and toward the Kingdom. As such, they may involve situations that are a little scary or a little dangerous. But God does not call us to hide in safety. He calls us out to serve. If we are being led by Him, we need not fear. We walk by faith, in trust that God will provide for us, care for us, protect us, and guide us.
Does this mean you will never buy another insurance policy or security system, or that you will never consider the ages/stages of your children before jumping into a Kingdom opportunity? Of course not. We still must care for the children God entrusts to us, seeking His wisdom for every decision related to their welfare. But we walk the best path when a Kingdom mindset informs those life decisions. We will live abundantly – and our children, having experienced the power of the Almighty God in their own families, will know the beauty and exhilaration of a life spent in Kingdom adventure.
Footnote
A lot of us, as moms, hold ourselves to pretty high standards — as in, we think we need to be perfect. This book is a helpful antidote to that thinking.
Chasing Perfect, by Alisha Illian
Recommended.