The Creator of the universe finds parenting to be challenging:
I reached out day after day
to a people who turned their backs on me,
People who make wrong turns,
who insist on doing things their own way.
They get on my nerves,
are rude to my face day after day,
Make up their own kitchen religion,
a potluck religious stew. (Isaiah 65.2-3)
Why should we expect it to be happier, easier, or somehow different?
This post, which appeared today on the Tapestry Adoption & Foster Care Ministry Facebook page, offers a better perspective:
God does not say to us: “Clean up your mess, get your act together, straighten yourself out, act your age, and stop embarrassing me…and then you can come to me and we can have a relationship.”
Instead, he says: “I will come to you in the midst of your mess, misbehavior, immaturity, impulsiveness, disobedience, selfishness, and falling apart…and I will meet you just as you are, right where you are. But, I will not leave you there. I will gently, yet firmly, lead you toward the hope, healing, and freedom that can only be found when you are truly connected.”
May our parenting reflect more and more this life-giving, grace-filled, transformational love of a God that runs to us, even when we are still far away.
The journey is not always happy, but there is joy when you know how to see it.