It starts with an email. A seemingly innocuous email about something gone wrong with one of the children – something gone wrong that I can instantly see stems from something I failed at as a parent. Today it was about my youngest daughter cursing out her sister using words that sound very “Dad”-ish. And since I’m human, on the other side of the world, and an analytical sort of person suffering from jet-lag and thus blessed with all the early-morning time in the world to think about these things I start compiling a list of other contributing factors to this behavior that, if I’m being honest, mitigates my culpability by quite a bit. And since I’m me I keep digging and digging at this in some ludicrous search for an ultimate cause, versus a proximate cause, and realize that it’s not just my rancid mouth that’s to blame. No, the ultimate cause of most of my family troubles is this: My heart is not big enough, genuine enough, and there is not enough joy and love in my being to spend the time required to properly raise my kids. I am not forgiving enough. I am not willing to spend the hard, quiet time in one-on-one and group interaction with my kids. I can find all the time in the world to research dive equipment, play video games, brew beer, apply for grad school, plan career moves, deal with the house and bills, and plan another vacation but I cannot spare the time and intestinal fortitude to sit and talk with my kids for more than a couple minutes a day about how much I love them, talk about their day and what’s important to them, or just spend some quiet time paying attention to them. In short: I am a selfish person that doesn’t spend enough time with his kids because it is easier to deal with everything else in life than to actually show love on a daily basis to the ones that I claim are dearest to me.
Hey, Look! I found that ultimate cause. Let’s talk some specifics because writing deeply personal stuff and posting it to the internet is my therapy.
My youngest daughter requires the most interaction of any of my kids and she gets the least. Unfortunately, her way of garnering interaction and attention has the unintended side effect of infuriating those closest to her. Because, as in the case of many adopted orphans, she doesn’t distinguish between positive and negative attention and so she goes with what’s the easiest to obtain – which is negative attention. And she does it subconsciously. All the time. And as thinking and loving parents we should acknowledge all of this and then build and execute a plan that factors in all her and our relationship variables and dynamics in order to help her express herself positively and help us as parents grow to be more understanding and supportive. And we can’t. After over four years we still can’t figure this out despite being highly-educated people with tons of resources at our disposal. Because even with all our education, experience and understanding we still get stuck in the moment on a daily or hourly basis and react and over-react in all the ways we wish our daughter wouldn't. Paul said it best in Romans 7:15-20 about knowing what you want to do but doing what you don’t want to do. And I live this in my home every day. Over and over and over again. I know that my youngest daughter requires a lavish and unrepentant application of love, and instead I provide a knee-jerk reaction of discipline and punishment and call it parenting. Or worse, I simply stay busy with whatever else is going on in life and speak some platitudes to whatever is going on in the house and make it sound “wise”.
So about that ultimate cause… what about the ultimate solution? I wrote it above and this is what prompted me to write: My daughter (and my wife, and all my friends, and all the people around me) requires a lavish and unrepentant application of love. She needs it on a daily basis and it needs to be applied with wisdom and kindness, and self-control, and gentleness, and all the things that they sang about on that “Music Machine” record we had in the house when I was a kid. The Fruit of the Spirit? Yeah, those things that I haven’t got. The only source for those things is found in Romans 7:25. It is the example of God’s love – his lavish and unrepentant application of love through his Son - that I must use with my daughter. More grace. More wisdom. More loving-kindness. More judicious applications of discipline and mercy. More of all the things that I don't have enough of. So I'll continue to pray for that same application of love to me and Jenn so that we can give it to our kids. Because God knows that we're kind of sucking at it right now.
