As parents, our emotions are constantly shifting, changing from one extreme to the other, like a pendulum on Starbucks triple shot espresso. Our world can swirl and twirl and flip us upside down in a second and an hour later we’re laying on our face in the emotional gutter and wondering what happened. This is overwhelmingly true if you're parenting a teen.
From the moment we lift our lead filled eyelids in the morning to the last gasp of breath before it’s a snore, we face so much uncertainty and challenge that it tempts us to just “react” our way through the next 18 hours. We have reasons to move protectively and guarded throughout our day, watching and waiting for the next disappointment to show itself and prove how right we are about how bad things have become. We’re convinced that our world is fragile, like an egg about to be cracked on a hot stove…
But, that’s not really living… it’s surviving.
As parents and followers of Christ, we are given another option beyond bare human existence… we’re offered a chance to “thrive”, to actually “LIVE” our lives in a positive direction, focused and intentionally moving forward.
It comes down to our internal choice of what we’re going to believe to be true. Let me explain…. IF we only believe in our own ability to fix stuff, exclusively looking to come up with our solutions to our daily disappointments,we’re going to get “reactionary” in a heartbeat. We’re in danger of being trapped in an endless current of fear, frustration and bitterness at the repeated “losses” we feel.
IF we choose to “remember” the heritage of faith that we have in our hero Jesus, we can recall the hundreds of times he’s saved us from every kind of trial, painful disappointment or open betrayal. When we choose to look on the one whose faithfulness is timeless and true, we can shrug off the moments of emotional turmoil as the normal side effects of living life as a human and put them back into proper perspective rather than allowing them to overshadow our entire day.
Our source of hope and happiness cannot be the pulse of our emotional heartbeat…. instead we can find stability and strength in our own personal epistle of God’s faithfulness, looking back to see where, when and how God showed up to fix things in our past. Remembering those impossible life situations that were miraculously flipped from bad to awesome. It gives us a personal testament, a tangible evidence we’re not in this all alone, that there is a good, kind and just God, who cares about our lives.
God is constant, He is eternal and He is unchanging.
That’s welcome relief for those of us who are parenting in the turbulence of real life with real trials, and longing for something solid to put our full trust into… to be able to really rest in the middle of an insane world. The bible puts it like this…
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment Revelation 21:4-6 (ESV).
So hang in there dear ones… God will show up, He has, he will and he’s going to. We don’t have to wait until we’re dead in Heaven to find rest for our souls, we can have it right now… even when our lives seem to be trapped in orbit around those hormone fueled teenagers who live on a distant dusty planet called, Emptybrainus!
