Parenting With Heart By Stephen James And Chip DoddSample

Day 2

Permission to Be Good Enough

2 Corinthians 12:9

In order to parent from the heart, we must face the two stances of parental perfectionism. Achievement-focused parents baptize children in the notion that if we/they learn enough, do enough, make enough, then we/they can make our/their lives work. Comfort-focused parents demand perfection of the world. These parents attempt to create a space in which their children will not have to experience life on life’s terms.

If we give words to what drives both types of parents, we might hear the heart say, “If I do this well, and I shape my children for success or safety or significance, then they will not hurt and will be happy and I can rest in knowing I did my best.” If we went deeper, we might hear the heart say, “I don’t really trust God to order the world of my children and care for them. I can do better than God.” 

The good news is that there is a third way, a more heart-centric approach in which we let ourselves and our children be good enough—a concept that embraces a more integrated, authentic, and engaged style of parenting. This way leads us away from the demands of perfectionism for ourselves, our children, or our world.

Rather than seeking to be safe and in control, we become capable of living life on life’s terms. We rest in the reality that we will be, for the rest of our days, a constant work in progress. When we begin to accept that clumsy is the best we get, we can begin to offer what our children really need from us: heartfelt relationship.

This encompasses empathy, sensitivity, grief and celebration, perseverance, authenticity, understanding, boundaries, and reduced demands while still having high expectations, gratitude, acceptance of others and self, understandable anger and frustration about life, and hope as what holds it all together.

These noble things can only be achieved by gaining and surrendering to the heart experience of living. The good-enough, clumsy parent is a wise-hearted person who lives from their authentic emotional and spiritual core and who has struggled truthfully to accept this clear edict: it takes a lifetime to learn how to live. 

Look at yourself in the mirror. Look into your eyes. Then write a letter to yourself about all you see there, both the strengths and the struggles. How can you grant yourself permission to be good enough today?