It’s for the kids…
As I read today’s entry, my mind was spinning, thinking about all the ways we as adults need to better care for the kids around us – all of them, not just ours. We need to notice the quiet ones; we need to encourage the timid ones. In our homes with our own kids, we need to teach them what God thinks about them so they don’t grow up with these identity struggles.
And then I got to the last sentence: If you are going to help your child realize his identity and acceptance in Christ, you must lead the way by doing so in your own life.
We reproduce what we are, not what we say, right? It hit me pretty hard today. I’m realizing that while I excuse myself for not working very hard to maintain a good self-image, I am not just hurting myself. I want to set them up to base their identity on what God says about them…
Yup, I have work to do.
Our childhood comes back to haunt us and if we are not careful we will put on our children all the issues we thought we left behind. I try to be mindful of what I am teaching my kids by example but sometimes by the time I realize what I have done it comes out as an issue we need to work to resolve.
ReplyDeleteIf I am too overprotective my kids don’t learn how to make mistakes and recover from them.
If I am too strict they become critical, if I am too lenient they become brats, oh I mean disrespectful.
It is hard to teach something by example that I am struggling with and it sounds like that makes a party for Satan. I struggle with these things Neil lists and yet I can see the positive side of them in each child, but it is not as easy to see them sometimes in myself.
Lord forgive me for my failures.