Grace for the Parent Outside the Door

God is greater than the heart that keeps the record

The king of Israel climbed the stairs to the small room over the city gate, and he wept for a son who'd just tried to take his throne.

Then the king was deeply moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept. And as he went, he said thus: "O my son Absalom—my son, my son Absalom—if only I had died in your place! O Absalom my son, my son!" (2 Samuel 18:33)

God called David a man after His own heart (Acts 13:22), and David still lost a son. People who haven't stood in that room tend to read the verse quickly. Parents don't. A parent reads it and hears the question underneath it, the one that comes back every night around bedtime: Where did I go wrong?

The Hallway at 9:52

She's standing in the hallway with a basket of folded towels on her hip. His door is closed. A strip of light shows under it, and she can hear the low sound of a video playing. Three years ago he'd have yelled for her to come look at something. Tonight she's rehearsing a sentence about dinner on Sunday, trying to make it sound casual, and she can't find a version that doesn't sound like begging.

The towels aren't the heavy thing she's carrying. She's carrying a list. The time she yelled over spilled juice. The years she worked late. The church they quit going to when things got hard. Every parent has a list like that, and guilt reads it back to her one line at a time, usually at night.

Train Up a Child

Then there's the verse every Christian parent knows by heart:

Train up a child in the way he should go, And when he is old he will not depart from it. (Proverbs 22:6)

If your kid is pulling away, that verse can land like a grade on a report card. They're drifting, so you must not have trained them right, and there's nothing left to discuss.

But look at how Solomon built it. The way he should go is about the child. I've always loved how one translation renders it: train a child in the way appropriate for them. Every child is different. What works with your oldest won't necessarily work with your youngest, and that's exactly why we need help from heaven to raise them. And notice where the sentence lands: when he is old. It's looking at the long arc of a life, and your teenager is somewhere in the middle of the story. The proverb is wisdom about what love tends to grow over a lifetime. It was given to help you, and it was never meant to measure your standing with God.

I've reminded parents at baby dedications that they don't own their children. God has given you managerial rights for a few decades, to point that child to Christ day after day. A faithful manager can watch someone they love make their own choices, and that's what it looks like when the person you raised grows into a person with a will of their own.

I Blew It Too

I'm not writing this as a dad who got it all right. I'll never forget the time I came down hard on my son for something that wasn't even in his control. It was an unfair response, and even to this day I'm embarrassed by it. I looked at him and saw fear in his eyes, the kind a son shouldn't have toward his father. Abbe and I made an adjustment right away. None of us has this figured out, and it's hard to say that out loud, but saying it is where healing starts to flow.

Here's what that moment couldn't do. It couldn't make me less of a son to my Father, because my standing with God was resting on what Jesus did, and my parenting had nothing to add to it or subtract from it. That freed me to look at my mistake honestly, without defending it or drowning in it, and go make it right.

Guilt that's been answered at the cross can apologize. Guilt that hasn't been answered usually hides, or overcorrects, or hovers outside a door it's afraid to knock on.

Greater Than Your Heart

John wrote to believers who knew what it's like when your own heart won't let something go:

For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things. (1 John 3:20)

Your heart keeps a record, and it's thorough. It remembers every sharp word and every missed game. God knows all of it too, and He's greater than it. In Christ He has dealt with every line on that list, and He sees you through what His Son finished.

Isaiah pictures the Lord as a shepherd who gathers the lambs in His arms, and then he adds a line I think was written for parents: And gently lead those who are with young (Isaiah 40:11). He isn't driving you from behind with your mistakes. He walks at the pace of someone carrying a child, because He knows that's what you've been doing all along.

Before You Knock

So what do you do in the hallway? You don't have to fix ten years tonight. Some nights the most you'll manage is a soft knock and a question about whether they want anything from the store, and that counts. You can say "I was wrong about that" without making it a speech. You can ask about the video. You can let a short answer be enough for one evening.

She shifts the basket to her other hip and knocks twice, lightly, with one knuckle. Whatever answer comes through that door, the Shepherd who gently leads those with young is standing in the hallway with her.