Daily Lesson for May 12, 2014

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Colossians 3 verse 21:

"Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged."

Yesterday I was in one of our young parents' Sunday School classes, and it being Mothers Day we were naturally talking about motherhood and all its pressures. We talked about shame and the way it hooks moms into thinking they have to achieve "effortless perfection". Mothers are supposed to do it all - raise perfect kids, keep a perfect house, be perfect volunteers, cook perfect meals, be perfect employees - and look like its nothing at all to do all of it. We talked about how impossible that is and how accepting its impossibility is the pathway to grace. Paul's words were recalled, "His grace is sufficient for me; His power is made perfect in my weakness." Somebody then gave us a light-hearted moment when they said they recently saw a woman wearing a shirt that said, "World's OKest Mom".

That discussion yesterday about motherhood has me thinking about fatherhood also. Fathers watch our boys strike out in the 9th, or our girls get cut from the cheer leading squad, or any one of our children not behave like we expect them to and it pushes a shame button in us. The same thing happens when our wives end up not keeping that perfect house we expected them to. The shame button goes off. They aren't perfect; and because the whole can see that then that means it can also see that I'm not perfect. So our answer to this over and over again is to drive our kids and our spouses - to push them harder and harder until we end up pushing them away. As Paul writes, we provoke them until they lose heart.

The only way we fathers can get out of this shame cycle and begin to give our children and our spouses the grace they need is to accept it for ourselves. I am not perfect. Any attempt to make others think I am perfect is based on my own ego need. So too is my desire to have my kids and wife appear to be perfect. They will fall short and in falling short my shortcomings will be revealed. But it is at that moment, when I accept all these shortcomings, that I discover God's grace truly is sufficient for me and for them. And that is enough.

I really am the world's OKest dad, with the world's OKest children, and a wife who is the world's OKest mom. And you know what? That really is OK, because we all have the greatest God who can do some pretty incredible stuff with just OK people.