Kristen Anne Glover

Five in Tow

30 Days to Enjoying Your Children More: Tattling {Day 14}

Welcome to our series! Find Day 1 here.

I don’t remember the events of the day.  They were so insignificant in and of themselves.  But after a whole day of minor catastrophes, broken rules and bad behaviors, I had reached my limit.  Frustration bubbled right under the surface.  By 4:30, when I heard my husband pull in the driveway, I was ready to pop.  He opened the door, smiled, and said, “Hey, how was your day?”

It was the wrong thing to say.

The very sight of his face was like an open invitation to release all the negative emotions I’d been harboring all day.  In capital letter phrases, I spewed frustration and irritation all over him.  There was The Incident at the Grocery Store Which Will NEVER Happen Again and the Diaper Malfunction of Epic Proportion and the Tantrum Heard ‘Round the World.  There were No Naps and Potty Training Mishaps and Biting.

Yes, Biting.  I paused for a moment so my husband could feel appropriately sorry for me.  Also, he needed to hang up his coat.

While I waited, I thought of a few other things I had failed to mention.  The very thought of those injustices caused my heart to beat faster.  The imprint of anger lingered though the offenses should have been forgotten.

“Maybe we should talk about this later,” my husband said.  He didn’t sound at all sorry for me.  Exasperated, I turned around.  There behind me, listening with eyes wide, were my three oldest children.  They had been there the whole time.  They were standing right there when I recounted their sins to their daddy, listening to me tattling about their bad behavior and our awful day, listening while I vomited grievances I said I’d forgiven.

No one had to tell me I was wrong.  I knew it the minute I saw them.  I knew it too late.

Parenting can be downright frustrating.  But that gives me no right to air my frustrations to anyone who will listen.  It does not give me the right to hold on to anger until my husband gets home and I have a chance to “vent.”  It does not give me the right to keep a record of wrongs and apply forgiveness retroactively after I’ve had a chance to update my Facebook status with my current hardships.

Love requires me to treat my kids with more respect that.

“Love keeps no record of wrongs.”  How I struggle with that some days!  If I don’t keep a record of wrongs, I can’t exact the sympathy I want from my husband who gets to work with adults all day.  I can’t earn a friend’s pity, and no one is going to tell me I deserve to indulge myself in a bubble bath unless they know how hard I have it.

“Love believes the best.”  It also shows the best.  It seeks to build up, not tear down.  The things I say about my children or post on Facebook should always be the best things there are to say.  In our culture, it only takes a second to post a reproachful comment about your child for hundreds of people to see.  It only takes a second to send a tattling text or dial up a friend on the phone so you can vent about the kids you have buckled up in the back seat while you cruise down the carpool lane.

Social media and cell phones were not invented so we can tattle on our kids.  It is the equivalent of reciting all their wrongs while they stand there listening just so we can gain some sympathy for ourselves.  It is an unequal exchange, and the child always loses.

It all comes down to this: there is never a parenting concern so important it requires me to address it publicly unless I am trying to decide whether or not to take one of them to the ER.  Love airs praises in public and addresses concerns in private.  Love does not tattle. 

Someday, my children will be old enough to read my Facebook history.  I want them to feel loved by what they read, not betrayed.  Right now, they are old enough to hear what I say about them to Daddy, Nana, and the moms I meet for play dates.  Right now, they are listening.  What they hear me say about them will tell them whether I am a follower of Christ or a fraud.

What they hear will tell them if I believe what I say or not.  If I say I know love but sacrifice their reputations for the temporary consolation of a friend, I do not know love.  I say I know forgiveness, but if I harbor far lesser offenses than have been forgiven of me, then I do not know forgiveness at all.

Here I am, a harlot with a wandering heart.  Yet I have been bought by the blood of Christ, washed, forgiven, and redeemed.  God has every right to boast of His goodness in contrast to my darkness.  He has every right to list my offenses in the heavens for all to see.  But He does not.  He stands before the world and calls me His Bride.  His Chosen One.  His Beloved.  His Child.

My Father delights in me.  I think part of that delight comes from the fact that He does not simply forgive my sins; He forgets them.  He enjoys me because He chooses to let go of the things that divide us.   It is a kind of love that does not tattle.  It does not traipse my bad stuff out in public for all the world to see.  It does not even rehash it in the living room or at the dinner table.  Love allows forgiveness to be the end of the story.

When I tattle on my children and air their offenses in public, I do not feel better.  I taste the bitterness of anger.  I rekindle my desire for retribution and at least a full pound of flesh.  I feel slighted because their little “I’m sorry” is incapable of recognizing how much I’ve been wronged.  I cannot delight in my children when I continually cut into the same wound.

Enjoying my children requires me to demonstrate the kind of love and forgiveness I have been shown.  If I say I know love, it must be my Father’s kind of love.  If I say I know forgiveness, it must be His kind of forgiveness.  That is the stuff that binds my heart to theirs and allows me to enjoy them as part of this beautiful redemption.

That is the kind of stuff that is worthy of a Facebook status update.

Love keeps no record of wrongs.

Please join us tomorrow for Day 15: Fear

For further thought

1) In 1 Thessalonians 5:11, Paul encourages us to build each other up.  Listen to the words you say to and about your children today.  Are they edifying?  Do they build up or tear down?

2) May our prayer today echo King David’s in Psalm 19:14: “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart [and the things I post on Facebook] be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer.”  Pray that simple line whenever you feel tempted to tattle on your children today.

3) Activity: Make it your objective to remember the best and funniest things your kids do all day.  Write them down (see my Quote Wall for an example), post them on Facebook, and share them with your spouse over the dinner table instead of all the bad things.  How does this change your heart for your children?  Do you find yourself enjoying them more?

30 Days to Enjoying Your Children More: The Good {Day 12}

New here? Click here to start at the beginning of the series.

Based on the roar coming up from the downstairs bedroom, someone had to be dying.  Except that I was pretty sure people die more quietly than that.  Someone was being torn limb from limb or was being eaten by a wild beast.

Or.

Or, one of my twins had a toy the other twin wanted.  Sure enough, a peek downstairs revealed Paul flailing on the floor while Micah played nearby, contentedly pushing a “weally, weally cool” Matchbox car, oblivious to his brother’s agony.

“MI-CAHhhhHHhhhhHHHHhhhhh!”  Paul wailed.  “I WANT THAT CAR!”

“Hum,” Micah said.

Great.  Here we go, I thought.  We have a million Matchbox cars and they have to fight over the same one?

Paul gritted his teeth, making the little dimple under his eye stand out.  “Arrrrrrrrrrgh!” he said through clenched jaw.  His frustration was palpable, probably because he was biting his tongue.

Micah looked at the prized car in his hand.  “Hum,” he said again.  Then, he shrugged his shoulders and handed the car to Paul.  What. Just.  Happened?

“Micah!” I said, stunned.  Even Paul looked stunned.  “Micah, you shared!”  Micah grinned sheepishly.

I had practically given up on the fact that those boys would ever share anything but flu germs.  It seems to me that I spend an unthinkable amount of time breaking up arguments and reminding them how not to act like savages.

Then God gave me that moment.  It stood out in the middle of our mess like a giant orange construction sign that read “God at Work.”

God was at work in my children!  Who would’ve thought.  Sometimes, I think the construction project has stalled out and we’re not making any progress.  Haven’t we been over the sharing thing a bazillion times?  And why do you still pick your nose?  Can’t we be done with that nasty habit already?

There are days when I feel a little bit like an Israelite, wandering around in the same sand pit year after year after year.  For forty years, Israel didn’t seem to be getting anywhere either.  They weren’t, as a matter of fact.  And even though God provided for all their needs in the most astonishing ways, they didn’t really notice.  Most of the time, they just grumbled and complained about all the things that weren’t going right.

But God was at work that entire time.  When they finally reached the Promised Land, a big, nasty river stood in their way.  So God parted the waters of the Jordan just like He had parted the waters of the Red Sea, and Israel walked over on dry ground.

I bet the Israelites noticed that.  They had seen that before, far away in Egypt when God redeemed them out of slavery.  It was like a great exclamation point on the end of forty years of discouragement.  He had been working all along.  He had been faithful all along.

Before they could even go about collecting some of that much longed-for milk and honey and enjoy the fruit of the promise, God told them to get back into the mud of that riverbed and dig up 12 stones.  Why?  Because God wanted them to set up the stones as a reminder.  He wanted them to remember not how relieved they were when they finally got there, but how the mighty hand of God had been at work the entire time.

There will be times with your children when it seems like you’re wandering around in circles.  But God is at work.  The problem is that we tend to focus on what our kids do wrong rather than what God is doing right.  We get discouraged because they are so far from where they need to be.  We forget to notice how far they’ve come.

When Jonathan was little, he had an issue with lying.  Everything that child said was a lie, even if the lie didn’t benefit him at all.  If you asked him, “Jonathan, is your name Jonathan?”  he would answer “No.”  It was that bad.

My husband and I worked and worked and worked with him on it for years.  Years.  We couldn’t understand why he did it, and we couldn’t get him to stop.  Every time Jonathan told a lie, I felt like I had just taken another lap around the desert.  Here we are again, fighting the same old losing battle.

Then one day, Jonathan told me the truth.  But I didn’t notice it that day.  He told me the truth again, and I still didn’t notice.  Finally, one day, Jonathan looked at me and said, “Mom!  I’m telling you the truth!”

Sure enough, he was.  I hadn’t noticed because it was gone, out of my sight.  God had taken it away, and I had already moved on to some other habit to break him of.

“Jonathan,” I said, “do you know what this means?”

He shook his head.

“This means God has been working in your heart!”

His eyes got big, and mine got teary.

“That is a good thing!  He has been working in your heart to help you not to lie.  Isn’t that awesome?”

God was at work.  Behind the scenes, where I didn’t always notice, God was doing what God does: changing hearts, convicting of sin, drawing my children near to Himself and bestowing grace upon them as members of His covenant family.  That is a work I cannot do, and when I see it happening, I need to grab onto it like a big old rock and set it up in my mind so I don’t forget, so I am not like Israel, grumbling under the blessings.

If you want to enjoy your children more, notice the good that God is doing.  Rejoice when you see the hand of God in the lives of your children.  Dig up some stones, even if you have to look long and hard for them, so you are always reminding yourself of the good.  Even when you can’t see it, the truth remains: God is at work. 

For it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.
Philippians 2:13

Please join us on Monday for Day 13: Affirmation.  This post goes hand-in-hand with today’s post, so don’t miss it! 

For further thought:

1)      Philippians 4:8 says, “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”  What happens when you take that Scripture to heart and put it into practice in your parenting?

2)      Make a list of all the ways you’ve seen God work in your family in the past week.  Name each child and give specific instances of how God has been faithful to work in his or her heart.  Remind yourself of it throughout the day.

3)      Read the account of Israel crossing the Jordan in Joshua 3:5-4:24.  Why did God tell them to go back into the river and pick up 12 stones?  What were the stones supposed to remind them of?

30 Days to Enjoying Your Children More: Praise {Day 11}

Welcome to our series! Find Day 1 here.

The outer gates had already been locked for the night when the doorbell sounded.  The five of us looked at each other, startled by the interruption.  A second ring quickly echoed the first, followed by a frantic pounding on the gate.  Something was wrong.

The missionaries I was visiting rushed to the entry.  They found one of their parishioners standing under the street lamp, tears running down his face.  His fourteen-year-old daughter had run away from home.  Mario and his family had been searching for hours, but they could not find her.  Now night was falling on the streets of Mexico City, and despair was rising.

We gathered back inside and began to pray.  Members of the small house church began to arrive, pressing themselves into the circle and taking up the burden that was too much for any one of us to bear.  Fear reigned.  We all knew what could happen to a girl who gambled with a night on the streets.

Then someone started to sing a song of praise.  It was almost as shocking as a doorbell sounding in the middle of the night—praise in the midst of despair, praise in the midst of fear, praise when it was hard to be thankful at all.  “Tu fidelidad es grande, tu fidelidad incomparable es…”

Your faithfulness is great,

Your faithfulness is incomparable.

Something in the room began to change.  Our focus shifted from the hopelessness of the situation to the awesome sovereignty of God.  Hope began to drive out fear.  Light began to penetrate the darkness.  It was as if God came down to meet us there and turned the bitter stuff of earth into holy ground.

It took my breath away.  Never had I seen praise used like that before.  In my experience, praise was mostly confined to Sunday mornings or an occasional “Way to go, God!” when something particularly great happened.  But praise in the midst of darkness?  Praise for despair?  Praise when there was so much to ask for?  That was new.

The psalmist said “God inhabits the praises of His people.”  (Psalm 22:3)  I had never seen that verse come alive like I did that night in a small house in a barrio of a dark city.

When we praise God, God fills up our praises, dwells in them, and reigns on them.  Darkness cannot stay in a room filled with praise—it has to flee to make room for God to come down.  When we lift our lips to praise, God bends to receive it.  He comes into the midst of us.

If God is here in my midst, then this place where I am standing, this Mexican house or this home filled with sippy cups and board books, of broken promises and heartache—this is holy ground.  Neither Satan nor any of his mercenaries can stand on holy ground.  The darkness that threatens to undo me must go.

Some days, I feel too broken to praise.  Then I remember praise is God’s gift to the broken.  It is an anecdote to the hopeless.  It is power to those who have no advocate because it speaks the very essence of God into darkness.

Perhaps that is why King David spent so much time lifting holy hands in praise.  His wasted his best years running for his life.  His beloved friend died.  Two of his sons died.  His daughter was raped.  He had blood all over his hands.

Yet no one in the Bible praised God as much as David.  In the middle of the desert, in the dark of a cave, with enemies all around him, David had faith, and David found holy ground.

How I need God to come down on the days when I don’t feel any joy for my calling or any delight in my children!  How I need to praise Him.

Not just thank Him—praise Him.  The two words are not the same, and they do not hold the same power.  It is the difference between saying, “Thanks for the pie!” and “You make the best pie.”  One is thanks.  The other is praise.

Thanks, or thanksgiving, is temporal.  It can be new every day just like the mercies of God.  And it is a good thing to give thanks to the Lord!  We should always acknowledge His gifts to us.  But one day, all the gifts will have been given, and all that is lacking in us will have been filled up.  There will no longer be any need.

But when the needs have all been met, and the thanks have ceased, the praises will have just begun.  Praise is eternal.  It is not temporal because it acknowledges the unchanging attributes of God.  Praise affirms and proclaims God’s character.  It says something about Him, not just what He has done but who He is.

That is what we were created for, not just to respond to God, but to recognize and declare the truth about God even before His hand moves to bless us.  That makes praise an offering of faith.  When we praise God, we are saying, “Though I have not seen you, I know you.”  Thanks is remembering.  Praise is believing.

When we step out in faith and praise God even when our circumstances make it difficult, God always meets us there. 

Do you want to enjoy your children more, even when it is difficult?  Do you want God in your living room, giving you strength in the midst of the struggle?

Praise Him.

Please join us for Day 12: Focus on the Good

For further thought

1) Open your Bible to Psalms.  How far do you have to read before you come to a command to praise?

2) How can thanks become man-centered?  Why can praise never be man-centered?

3) Activity: The next time you or your kids are particularly cranky, put on some praise music and dance!  Did God meet you there?