Homegrown: Cultivating Kids in the Fruit of the Spiritናሙና

Loving Well   

The opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is fear. To put it simply, an unsafe environment instills fear. A safe environment rids itself of fear. 

Just think of the fearful ways we react to our kids in stressful moments when they act out. Yelling. Blaming. Punishing. Shaming. Maybe even spanking out of anger. When we react to our kids out of the insecurities from our own stories, we do so from fear—fear of our kids turning out a certain way, fear of treating our kids the way our parents treated us, fear of losing control as a parent, or perhaps even fear of being seen as a bad parent.

What are the fears you carry that inhibit your ability to love well? Perfectionism? A parental agenda?

When we as parents react to our kids out of fear, it’s not their misbehavior our kids are thinking about—it’s the fear of disconnection they feel from the person who is supposed to be the emotionally safest in their lives. This is how the tendency to recreate the cycle of fear is rooted in our own stories.

Choosing to be an imperfect parent is choosing to be a loving parent. So feel free to mess up—but be quick to work to repair the relationship. Scripture calls this forgiveness and tells us to practice it a lot.

By repairing a rupture in our relationship with our kids, we free them from any expectation to be perfect themselves. Not only that, it teaches our kids the appropriate way of handling imperfection when they make a mistake as well.

Simply using the words “I’m sorry. Will you forgive me?” as they relate to a specific offense with your kids and then changing your behavior toward them speaks more about who you are than anything else you do. Owning your imperfection makes you emotionally safer and more loving than trying to be perfect.

Perfect love requires that we own up to our imperfections. If you have a personal story you can tell—age-appropriately—about how God redeemed brokenness in your life and showed His unconditional love through the pain, tell it to your kids. This is your chance to help them see how God never leaves us or abandons us (Deut. 31:6).