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Key Bible Verse: Isaac loved Esau in particular because of the wild game he brought home, but Rebekah favored Jacob (Genesis 25:28). Bonus Reading: Psalm 103:13-14

When a child comes home three hours after curfew, the fact that he or she caused me to lose sleep, to worry, or to fear isn't the biggest issue. Emotionally, I want to make it the biggest issue, because that's how the episode affected me.

Angry and hurt parents sometimes react to a wound by hurting the child they want to save. It is one of the great ironies of being a mother or father that in our frustrated relief over our child's physical safety, we can obliterate them verbally. In God's provision, we have to become bigger than our wounds. That's the problem of acting out of our woundedness: It's all about me. But God calls me to act in such a way that it's all about our children, and their relationship to Him.

My emotions, like the weather, are just there, making the situation more or less pleasant, but they mustn't determine what I do. Handling anger this way is a fine art, crafted out of repeated failures. We can't learn to handle difficult emotions merely by reading about them. We have to walk through them. We have to experience them. And what invites us to do this more than raising children?

—Gary Thomas in Sacred Parenting

My Response: If my child comes home late, how should I manage the love, fear, relief, anger, and thankfulness?

Thought to Apply: Most of us become parents long before we have stopped being children.—MIGNON MCLAUGHLIN (The Neurotic's Notebook author)

Adapted from Sacred Parenting (Zondervan, 2004) by permission.

Copyright © 2006 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.

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Prayer for the Week

Thank you, Father, for using my children to reveal where it is I need to grow up, and to push me to put their needs ahead of my own.

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