I was talking to a friend yesterday who was at his wits with his primary level children. I remember when my kids were younger - the many frustrations I had felt with their attitudes....We’ve all been there before as parents. Your child has been told what to do and doesn’t do it. You’re tired and irritated. You have no patience left in your parenting tank. And so, you yell at your child (and perhaps even punish your child irrationally) in anger and frustration. But what good does it do? Even though you took charge of the situation, your heart feels empty and frustrated and so does your child’s.
Let’s rewind the tape. Your child has been told what to do and doesn’t do it. Instead of reacting in anger, you acknowledge the fact that you are tired and lacking in patience. So before speaking to your child, you speak first to God. Just a simple prayer asking Him something like,
“Father, I need your help right now. I need your Spirit to give me wisdom to talk with my child. I can’t do it on my own. I need you and my child needs you. Without you, Jesus, I can do nothing. So be with me now as I go. Open up my heart and my child’s heart to you.”
With a simple prayer such as this one, we take our parenting out of our hands and put it into God’s hands. We admit we cannot parent on our own. And so we pray a simple prayer of dependence … a simple prayer of reliance … a simple prayer of surrender.
I use to do that often when the kids were younger. I would walk out of the house. Take a walk by the park and pray and unload before the Lord. I would seek to first guard my heart and get divine perspective. And every time I came back to talk to them, I felt things were better. I changed. They changed and God was in the picture.
This is the prayer we parents rarely pray. But when we do take just a little time to pray it would change us, and it would change our families.
