Choosing Your Battles Wisely

Being a parent can be exhausting sometimes.  The physical demands of life with littles, combined with the emotional demands of responding to the deeper needs of your children has its challenges — which is why we need to choose our battles wisely.

Believe me, if you’re a parent who cares about your children, there will be battles.  Kids are naturally going to try to push the limits, at least a little bit, and these are great opportunities to clarify what you value as a family.

These moments can help our kids to develop their own moral character. They also force us to examine why we believe what we believe and to own it more.

Who knew our kids were there to help us grow?

As I’ve said before, parenting is a bit of a crapshoot and a lot of prayer — I’ll let you know in about twenty years if our approach to raising children has worked out for us.

In the meantime, my instinct is to reassure parents, if you feel exhausted every once in a while from the battles, you’re probably doing the right thing.

At the very least, your heart is probably in the right place and if mistakes happen or things are said which shouldn’t be said, seeking forgiveness is another valuable lesson that all parents can model for their kids.

I think the key with our own kids is to choose the battles that must be fought, rather than the battles that can be fought.

I’ve had some amazing spiritual directors over the years, and I’ve always appreciated that they encourage me to work on one thing at a time and to not be overwhelmed by every thing I feel needs to change.

There is a lot of wisdom in that approach. We need to have the long game in mind.

Attempting to steam roll your kids into being the kids you think they should be — and now — is likely going to overwhelm everybody.  So choose your battles wisely.

Besides, we can’t always be fighting over every little thing or our relationship is going to suffer.

I once heard it said by Mark Hart, director of Life Teen, that “rules without relationship causes rebellion”.  Those are some good words to keep in mind as a parent.

We need to make space for building our relationships with our kids and not just fill our time together with rules and critiques.

We give our kids “rules” because we love them, but if they don’t feel that love behind the rules, they will likely begin to see it as a burden, rather than the blessing it is meant to be in their lives.

The second thing I would say is we need to accept the fact that we’re going to make mistakes.  We just are.

Just the other day, I was in an argument with my daughter and I said something I shouldn’t have said.  I didn’t realize it would hurt her feelings the way it did — and I honestly felt terrible afterwards.

My honest prayer said to God that night was a prayer I find myself saying more often than I would like, “Lord, I am an ass”.

And you know what? I was an ass.

When that happens, the only one thing to do is to apologize and try to repair the damage that had been done and to keep move forward trying our lousy best.

On the positive side, all my parenting mistakes has given me a greater mercy with the mistakes of my kids and a greater resolve to keep loving them, flaws and all.

So yay for being an ass. 🙁

That being said, if you feel yourself getting too emotional or angry in the midst of battle, and you know you can’t possibly speak the truth in love, then step away from the situation until you can.

Sigh.  I wish I would take my own advice more often.  Moving on.

There is another type of battle that is always more difficult for me to discern well. These are the battles that aren’t happening in our own homes, but are happening in society around us.

We’ve all probably had those moments where we see an injustice going on and we just want to run over to wherever that is in the world and fight that injustice.  These are good and noble impulses, but they must be checked, too.

It’s too much for one person to solve all the world’s problems — to try would eventually lead to the neglect of our own families and a tumble down a rabbit hole of darkness and despair.

This isn’t to say we should bury our heads in the sand.  We are called to love our neighbor, but we also need to trust that God is going to inspire people much closer to the actual event to do the hands-on work that is necessary.

Praying for those far off crises and finding good organizations doing work on the ground in those places is likely our best bet to help effect change in far off places.

The church has a word that addresses this concept.  It’s called subsidiarity.

Though the word is long, the concept is simple:  Put out the fires that are closet to you and then move on from there.  Love the people closest to you and move outwards from there.

Family first, community second, and support the good organizations around the world that can most effectively respond to those urgent needs in their own communities.  Subsidiarity.

Heck, one day when your kids are grown, you might even go and work with those groups you’ve been supporting through the years. How amazing would that be?

The needs of the world are great indeed, but you are the only mom or dad your kids will ever have — which makes your love for them irreplaceable.

Interestingly, in loving your kids, you just might have to engage in a battle that touches other peoples lives, too.

Currently, I have found myself entangled in a little drama myself.

It was one of those situations where I asked a few seemingly innocent questions about an event my children would be attending and I received very ambiguous answers in response.

All of a sudden, my Spidey sense was like, “What do we have here?”.  I knew the answers to those questions were important ones.

Do you ever have those moments?

I wanted to be like, “Hey, I have kids, so I know when somebody is trying to avoid answering my questions.  So fess up and we can all move on with our lives”.  Oh boy.  I somehow managed to contain myself.

After praying about it and talking to John and some trusted friends, I just knew I needed to hold those people accountable for some honest answers to honest questions — for my kids’ sakes and for the sakes of all the kids in attendance.

Le’s just say I’m still in the midst of it, but I felt compelled to do something, and I just couldn’t say no.

I’m here to encourage you, if you have prayerfully felt God calling you to engage in some battle, just do it.  Just take that leap of faith and know God will bring good out of it — even if you can’t imagine that good will come of it.

Who knows, maybe that love you have for your kids might be the beginnings of a blessing for a lot more people than you imagined.

At least you will be able to say that when injustices were happening around you, you didn’t just stand by and let it happen without a fight.

Maybe one day, somebody will return the favor and say yes to that thing God was asking of them and it will bless somebody you love.

I don’t know what saying yes to that thing God is asking you to do will do, but at the very least, it will surely console the heart of the Man who gave up everything for you.

That alone is reason enough to say “yes” and to fight the good fight that is set before you.

 ^“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”

2 Timothy 4:7

 

 

 

Sharing over at Kelly’s.