Playing god again?
I’ve been thinking about being a parent a lot lately. It’s been a bit of a rough season - nothing that, as parents, we’re not used to. Our daughter is 8 and we seem to be at the precipice of a new developmental stage.
Which is always interesting.
Well, a question about being a parent that I often have to stop and ask myself is this…
“Jonas… Are you playing god for her? Or are you demonstrating for her how to trust God?”
Ugh… Yes, this is totally convicting. But asking it always leads to a holy exhale and a shift in the relationship between me and my daughter.
Because I remember there’s an Ultimate third party involved. A Triune party…God.
I want to play my daughter’s god. I want to control all circumstances. Pad every fall. And I’m not always a loving god. I often project my fears, anxieties, and confusion onto her when she doesn’t deserve it. I reward her so that I can get her approval. And all of the things that a bad god does.
And I’m sure I’ll do this until the day I die, God help me.
But I am not my daughter’s god. One day, as I said, I’ll be dead. And the most important thing is that she is able to trust the divine ground under her feet as she moves through life. Knowing there’s something far bigger and infinite than both her and me - something that is closer than her breath - that loves her, made her, claims her, and guides her. This love from Christ will not shield her from her tears, but it will wipe away every tear. I want her to know that God breathed life into her on her first day and that it is God's breath that flows through her all of the days of her life. It is borrowed. And it is a gift. As is all of her life.
Her dad is a flawed, scared, and broken human - as we all are. But God - the fabric of Life itself - can be trusted through all of it. Even unto and beyond death.
That question, though... Go ahead and cross out my name and put yours on it if it helps. Even if you're not a biological parent. Even if you're one entrusted with a parental role of any degree. It is yours as it is mine. Thanks be to God.
Profound. Should be in a parenting publication
Jonas, you've described perfectly a truth about my life: Because my father was so over-protective of me (even into adulthood), a psychologist once literally told me that I needed to tell my father that he "was not God in my life"... which I proceeded to do (in a kindly and respectful manner of course) -- and it practically killed him, as I was his favorite of the three of us children. (The psychologist later told me that he meant for me to only say it to myself... not out loud to my father (Ha! Not so expressed!)
As a result of my father's over-protectiveness, I gave extreme latitude to the natural independent nature of my own children... the same extremely independent nature with which I was born but had curtailed by a well-meaning loving father! So... Amen to what you are wisely expressing here.