I’m 42 years old and I still struggle to pattern my life in a way that invites people to ask me why I’m different. I struggle to show unconditional love to people I love the most. All of this failure seems to have created difficulties with my grown kids, and I don’t want it to be the case with my daughter still living at home. It’s interesting how I can know God’s Word so well, and yet still express such disappointment with my kids.
I don’t know where they are spiritually. I pray that God takes each one and molds them into the person (or people) He wants them to be.
With my youngest daughter, I need incredible patience. She is the kind of person that will find what bothers you and continue doing it just to bother you. She doesn’t even seem to care much about punishment. She just wants to control every situtaion. We’re trying EVERYTHING to stop her from doing this.
Since my health turned south, God has reminded me that I need to do better. I can’t continue to think that everybody else is the problem. Perhaps, I’m the problem. Perhaps people are reacting my lack of love and for my lack of being a testimony of God’s love for us. I seem to take the sin my kids commit, personally. Why do I do that? Why do I take they’re rejection of the things of God personally. I guess I’m beginning to understand how God feels when His children sin against Him.
I’m praying that God will be me the ability to forgive people as He forgives me each time I commit sin against Him.
Greg Yoder 
I empathize with you. I am a single missionary living in Guatemala. My adopted son in almost 10 and I got him at 1 month of age. He knows his mother whom he sees about once a year. he has never met his father. Last year he exhibited an anger that at times has turned violent and that towards me. Through this time I have been learning to turn away from the anger, harsh words and abusive behavior and look towards God. In that I have grown, I am 60, in ways far above all I could imagine. God has given me a different level of love for this tormented child who exhibites the behavior of his biological parents. There is no method to reach these children but God’s wisdom. I pray for that for you and your family.
Greg, I could not believe my eyes as I read your heartfelt thoughts in Family Life. I thought I was the only parent that felt this way! I was so touched by your humbleness regarding your children. I too have taken my children’s rejection of holiness or “twisted view of scripture” quite personally and often have cried in repentance confessing my failure to lead my own children into a godly adult life. Am I to blame? Yes, to some extent though probably not as totally as I carry it, maybe. Do you feel it hard as well at times to pray for your kids, simply because of the emotional bond and feel that your own feelings of failure actually prevent your faith in God from cultivating in them what you want? I know I do. Maybe we could exchange as prayer partners…..I invite you to email me personally and exchange some thoughts and names of your children and I’ll take them before the throne, and you in turn can take mine. Maybe with us “out of the way” God can actually do more in their hearts and lives as we appropriate our faith for each other rather than self. Whether you accept the invitation is your decision, but I do admire your honesty before God and fellow believers and not trying to hide behind a fictitious cloak of spirituality. Do my chlidren concern me? Yes, as much as yours do you. So I leave you with this word that I often take refuge in: Psalms 138:8 The LORD will perfect that which concerneth me: thy mercy, O LORD, endureth for ever: forsake not the works of thine own hands. In the meantime, I encourage you not to pattern your life for others but with each day let God perfect the life of Christ in you, and cast your cares on him for he careth for you and we both know it is not His will that any perish but that all come to repentance. His arm is not short that it cannot save, and you and I must both continue to trust Him and the future of our loved ones. In His Love, Amylee
Thank you for sharing honestly.
from a fellow pilgrim in the journey.
God is soooo good! and the wonderful thing for me has been the fact that He’s at least, perhaps more interested in the journey that I am making as I lean in to Him in this endeavor to raise my children “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord”, as He is in their journey. I have been so blessed as I look back and see that the change in me is at least as big as the change that has happened for some of my children, and is happening for others of them. How I praise God for this. But it’s been a journey of blood, sweat and tears, and brokenness and humility and seeing my utter inability to do this on my own. I am still in process, but oh the joy of being here, where I am today. And what joy to think of all that God has to do in me as He works through that work, into the lives of my children (natural and adopted) and on from there in all the other relationships in my life. God bless and keep you and yours. Blessed are those whose hearts are set on pilgramage.