What a Child Really Needs: Worth (Part 3)

Children express needs differently than adults.  As adults we have refined skills, for better or worse, as to how to get our needs met.  Most of those skills involve saying what we need in one way or another.  Children just don't have the self-awareness that comes with maturity and they don't have the words to say what they feel and what they need.  It is up to us to delve into their world and their heart and to interpret their needs in the way they are expressed.  Often this expression comes in the form of behaviors.  Over the past two weeks I have discussed two of the basic emotional needs children have (as so well presented by Dr. Bruce Narramore in his book, "Help! I'm a Parent.")  You can find those posts here and here.  Now let's talk about the third of the four basic emotional needs a child has and what happens when that particular need is not met. 

Worth ... Value ... Dignity

Deep inside each of us lives the innate cry to know we matter.

In Psalm 139 God shows us that He carefully created each one of us, personally, specifically:

For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother's womb.
I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Wonderful are Your works, and my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth;
Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Your book were written the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them.  

You Are Loved - Open Your Arms to Receive the Gift

How many times do we hear that we are loved?  I know there are lives where this isn't said often enough.  But, the saying it may not matter as much as the seeing it.  As I was growing up, my family would shout, "I love you" as any of us were leaving the home.  It was like a tradition and almost became a rote way of saying, "Goodbye."  But the living it out was a challenge for us.  My dad was ill and my mom was frazzled.  Beyond that my dad came from a traditional German family and he basically had two emotions: Happy and Angry.  There was this sort of neutral emotion he had as well.  My mom covered the rest of the emotional spectrum that my dad did not seem to touch.  Lopsided.  Through years of perfectionistic expectations and harsh parenting approaches and the unavoidable distance which occurred when my dad was extremely ill, I didn't feel the words that were shouted as loudly as I felt something was missing -- in me.  My parents loved me.  They did.  They just had very broken ways of expressing love because of the denied brokenness inside of each of them.  A child can't see these truths.  A child thinks something is wrong with me.

But God, He already knows something is wrong.  He knew it when He formed the earth from shapeless nothing.  He knew it when angels rebelled and longed for power and position instead of peace and provision.  He knew about me then.  He knew about you.  It is a mind boggling process to imagine and wrestle with the knowing of God.  It is too lofty for us, but it is important not to shrink away from the imagining.  We must stretch up as a child stretches towards a father and try to glimpse the before time began love of God.  Back in the void when no thing was yet He loved enough to plan sacrifice.  Love is sacrifice.

Tree

I grew up in the places where trees are not afraid to touch one another.  Woods and forests and glens were my homeland.  And trees were for climbing and swinging free.  The willow on campus with its long beckoning branches became my rope swing and my fort.  The choke cherry made paint for sidewalks.  The maples were for climbing and sneaking behind during hide and seek.

Truth

Truth.

The Truth will set you free.  Free.  No one knows what free tastes like until they have lived in bondage and suffered the suffocating lack of freedom which comes from a lost and broken life.  Freedom.  Jesus said it was for freedom that He set me free.  And He won't stop His relentless pursuit of that freedom.  You see, I'll settle for less.  I'm fine with good enough if I get comfortable.  But, not Jesus.  He's just not willing to let me settle -- not when He has a wide open meadow of goodness and I could run unabandoned into His wide open love.  That's Truth.  The Truth is that He bent low and came to this earth for each one of us and He lived the normal life of an inconspicuous boy in a carpenter's home in a backwards little town and then He started to move into ministry.  All this to seek and save lost and broken people like me.  But then He went to my cross.  And He bore my sin.  That's the Truth.  And for what?  For the joy set before Him.  What joy?  The joy of my freedom in Him.  Can we wrap our brains around this gift?  Can we fathom the Truth of this unfathomable love?  He has freedom in mind -- in heart and soul -- for each of us.  The way is the way of the cross.  He endured the cross.  We go to the cross with Him and we nail our sin-filled hearts and allow Him to touch them with His loving care and we become transformed into increasing freedom.  The cross is the place of unavoidable pain.  The cross is the place of forgiveness, healing, resurrection, transformation.  Truth.  Truth sets us free.  Unearth the hidden places and allow the breezes of His love to move through for the freedom He died to bring to you. 

Stop. 

Our Little Daily Crosses

Jesus said, "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me." I've been thinking lately about those daily crosses. Into daily life come little inconveniences which require me to set aside what I planned to do and remind me to look to the needs of others.  Some seasons have larger crosses -- when health fails or finances dwindle and resources are tight; when children suffer or friends have burdens that weigh heavy on the mind.  The crosses of relational harm and misunderstanding leave scars and wounds too painful to ignore.  And yet, to be His disciple (student, follower, imitator) I am to take these up and follow Him.

Jesus echoed this idea six times in scripture and may have said it other unrecorded times.  It obviously was and is a vital message to his followers.  One of these incidents gives me pause:  We call him the "rich young ruler" and when he came to Jesus calling Him good and asking what he must do to be saved, this is what happened: Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, "One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me." As I read through this passage in Mark 10:21 today I was struck by something I hadn't made note of before.  Jesus, beholding him, loved him.  Jesus loved him.  Jesus loves you in this same way.  And, everything he says to this young ruler was said from that eternal, incomprehensible, self-denying love.  He says, "you lack something," in other words, something stands in the way of your heart coming freely to me.  He says that to you and He says it to me.  We have little idol factories in our hearts and without thought we manufacture things to worship and those things block the way to Jesus.  We must be rid of them.  For this man it was wealth.  We can idolize our children, our marriages, our friendships, our fitness (or the striving for fitness), finances, addictive behaviors or substances.  And those things must be named and they must be given away so we can follow Him. They must take their rightful place in order that He can take His. 

Jesus then admonishes this man to "take up his cross" and follow Jesus.  He says this same command and instruction again in Matt 10: 37-8, Matt 16:24, Mark 8:34, Luke 9:23 and Luke 14:27.  Sometimes he adds that we need to take up our cross, deny ourselves and follow Him.  Other times He says we won't be worthy (equal, congruent with Him) if we do not do this.  When Jesus calls us to deny ourselves He means for us to to "forget our self, lose sight of our self and our own interests" (in the Greek).  How do we lose sight of ourselves?  It's like me telling you not to think about elephants.  There you go.  Thinking about an elephant.  We don't forget something by thinking about it.  But, God knows this and He gives us alternatives.  He tells us to fix our hearts on the things above, not of this earth (Col 3).  He tells us to have the same mind as Christ had, thinking of others as more important than ourselves (Php 2) and He tells us to fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith (Heb 12).  Self-forgetting means God-remembering.  When we are fixed on Him, we are not distracted by self.

What does this self-denial look like in the day-to-day of our lives?  It means when my four-year-old comes and wants to play Candyland (which to me is akin to Chinese-water-torture), I fix my eyes not on my own comfort or desires, but on his desire to connect and play something he enjoys with me.  I set aside my wishes for his.  It means when my husband wants to talk about details of his day and I really want to check my Facebook notifications, I set the computer down and give him my undivided attention because he matters and I love him.  By letting his need be more important than my little habit of social media, I am dying to self and showing him (and Jesus) love.  Little crosses.  Little deaths to self.  Insignificant as these seem, they are the way of the cross.  The cross-centered life means giving up of my way, my wants, my desires, my comfort so that I can love you and thereby love Him simultaneously.  And we all have daily little crosses. 

Sometimes the crosses are heavier.  They are more burdensome.  There are offenses and rejections from friends and loved ones that sting like a barbed arrow into our heart.  There are afflictions like cancer, MS, or other illnesses which beset us or our loved ones.  And still Jesus encourages us to take them up.  In Greek the word for take up means to "raise up" or "bear."  As it is used in the verses in Matthew it means "to take what is one's own, or to take to one's self and make one's own."  I need to make these burdens my own as Jesus made the cross His own.  He bore it for me -- for you.  I can bear these afflictions for Him.  I have a few friends whose children are seriously ill.  One friend has a son with diabetes.  She gets up many times each night and checks his blood sugar, administers medications or protein, prays, serves and sacrifices.  Her life is one of constant vigilance for his sake.  She is taking up her cross.  I have another friend whose daughter suffers from severe eczema.  Her daughter wakes scratching herself and crying from the pain of itching.  She wakes and gives her daughter a bath to soothe her.  My friend is tired and weary of the constant giving and her own sleep deprivation, but she is taking up her cross.  She is making the suffering of her daughter her own.  She is bearing it

Matthew Henry said, "We must accustom ourselves to all instances of self-denial and patience.  This is the best preparative for martyrdom. We must live a life of self-denial, mortification [putting ourselves to death], and contempt of the world; we must not indulge our ease and appetite, for then it will be hard to bear toil, and weariness, and want, for Christ. We are daily subject to affliction, and we must accommodate ourselves to it, and acquiesce in the will of God in it, and must learn to endure hardship. We frequently meet with crosses in the way of duty; and, though we must not pull them upon our own heads, yet, when they are laid for us, we must take them up, carry them after Christ, and make the best of them." This type of self-denial and death to self is no longer popular in our world -- even our Christian circles.  But, Jesus isn't about popular.  His message is the same today as it was when He walked among men and said these life-shaking comments years ago. 

Strong's defines the cross as "a well known instrument of most cruel and ignominious punishment, borrowed by the Greeks and Romans from the Phoenicians; to it were affixed among the Romans, down to the time of Constantine the Great, the guiltiest criminals, particularly the basest slaves, robbers, the authors and abetters of insurrections, and occasionally in the provinces, at the arbitrary pleasure of the governors, upright and peaceable men also, and even Roman citizens themselves."  The cross isn't cozy.  It is a tool of death.  It hurts.  It is uncomfortable.  It is sometimes shameful and lonely.  Why should our cross be any different than His? 

We must take up this instrument and to it we must affix our own self.  And we take it up as Jesus did.  In Hebrews 12: 2 we are told Jesus took up the cross and thereby "finished our faith" and He did it "for the joy that was set before him."  He "endured the cross, despising [disregarding, thinking nothing of] the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God."  This is the promise of the cross.  We can take it up, as painful as it may be, and we can do it with joy set before us.  The cross is the precursor to resurrection.  There must be a death before there can be new life.  We must die to self and in that dying we will be reborn in newness and more Christ-likeness.  The cross is never the final word for Christians.  It is a pathway to freedom and joy and wholeness.

Mike Donehey of the band, Tenth Avenue North, said,

The cross is evidence to our minds, and balm for our souls that our God is a God who brings beauty out of pain. Art out of chaos. Beauty out of ugliness. Or as some of the poets have said, He conquers death by death itself. Our Redeemer beat Death at his own game.

Hope rises.

When we trust Christ, and the mysterious work on Calvary, we trust that He’s always up to something good even in the darkest days. In fact, that’s probably when He’s up to the most good, because that’s when the most good grows in me.

Each cross has its purposes and every cross promises blessings as fruit of our suffering.  In 1 Cor 1:18 Paul reminds us that the cross seems foolish to those who are perishing (the ones who are rejecting Jesus), but to us who are saved it is the power of God.  The cross is the way of power.  As in most things in God's kingdom there is this upside-down way.  We go to death and we find power.  We let go of our way and we find strength.  We suffer and we are freed.  It seems foolish in the world's eye to let go of our way, to yield to the troubles life brings and allow them to have their way in our heart and character.  But, in God's economy, this is the way of peace and life.  It is the crushing of the wheat that produces flour which has so many uses.  It is the crushing of our will that produces great usefulness as well. 

Paul reminds us in Gal 6:14 that through the cross we are crucified to the world and the world is crucified to us.  We can boast only in this cross -- the cross of Jesus.  It is the gate that leads us to relationship with God and it is the act which showed His love like nothing else before or since.  Ultimately the cross is a tool of reconciliation (Eph 2:16).  Through the cross Jesus reconciled us to God; He reconciled all people to one another; and He offered forgiveness to all.  Through my crosses I can do the same.  I can offer forgiveness because it was offered to me and at a great price.  I can show love -- and I can show it at a cost to myself.  But, unlike Jesus, who was forsaken for our sakes, when we take up our crosses we are not forsaken, but we are united to Him even more than before.  So, whether it be inconveniences or burdens we can bear these crosses with an eye to what they hold: the joy set before us as we grow in Him and His love.

Character vs Conduct - Part II

We are exploring the wonderful and trepidation filled process of helping our children to develop noble character.  In the first post we looked at what a character is and the process God has highlighted as the means for developing character.  The process is grounded in God’s love for us while we are sinners.  He died in our place and demonstrates His love on the Cross – so that His love is given to us at the right time when we are yet powerless.  Then, as life goes, we encounter trials and burdens and we can rejoice in the trials because they bear the fruit of perseverance which develops our character which makes us the type of people who can hope in the trustworthy God – because He proves His love as He transforms us through trials and we grow closer to Him and resemble Him more as we endure.  

So, what does all this have to do with our children and their character development? 

I think there are several important things we can look at and apply well and confidently:

First of all, we can see that character development starts with love – God’s love.   He gives that love, not according to our merit or worth or performance or conduct.  He loves us while we are sinners.  As a matter of fact, He doesn’t just love in a touchy-feely, “I love you” type of way.  He actually goes to the lengths of ultimate self-sacrifice while we are powerless sinners.  We all have heard of this unconditional love and we give it a good Christian head-nod.  How long has it been since you sat in His presence and pondered the depths of truth contained in this all-too-familiar story of sacrifice?  God’s love is not a love that says, “Did you clean your room?”  “Ok, then, come give me a hug and we can do something fun.”  His love is given – freely, fully and with great cost to Himself – before we ever do anything worth loving.  Unconditional, sacrificial, holy love is the ground upon which character-development begins.  Always.  Real and meaningful heart-transformation, below-the-surface changes come from being rooted and grounded in His love.  

Consider our role as a parent.  The children in our care will look to us for leadership and guidance and Jesus has said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them.  Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.  For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”  When you think of parenting do you see it this way?  Do you imagine emulating Jesus and serving those in your care – even to the point of giving your life?  Do you do this when they are powerless and still stuck in sin?  That is the foundation of the love that develops character.  Jesus didn’t come to be served, but to serve.  We are encouraged by His example to “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.”  Can we parent like that?  Can we, in humility consider our children as more important than ourselves and look to their interests instead of our own?  This is the high calling of motherhood.   Real transformation occurs when God’s love moves through us and the reality of His care is transmitted to our children while they are powerless sinners.  

We cannot muster this humility nor can we muster the love and delight God has for us.  But, we can access it, be transformed by it ourselves and then we can be vessels by which He reaches them and they come to know the truth and security of His deep and eternal love for each of them.  That brings me to the second key to character development in our children.  

The passage in Romans talks about gaining a proven character as we persevere through trials rooted and grounded in God’s unconditional love for us.  And the result is that we have hope that doesn’t disappoint.  We must focus on our own character development.  Don’t miss what I am saying here.  It seems to me, that once I had children, this shift took place in me wherein my focus became about them instead of about me.  Now before you give me the Nobel Peace Prize for altruism, know that self was still at the hidden center of this shift.  I was, of course, in love with my sweet boys and I wanted to care for them and give them all I could.  But, side by side with this pure mother’s love was this desire to see them be perfect accompanied by a fear of all the things that could go wrong in their lives.  That's a Molotov cocktail for parenting.  In the early years of motherhood I saw my child as a reflection as myself and their behavior as a statement of my worth as a mother.  I wasn't consciously aware of the depth of this skewed outlook, though I had glimpses of it.  If my two-year-old was throwing a tantrum at someone’s home, I felt a tad mortified that I didn’t have “control” of my child.  I was concerned that his normal (albeit sometimes sinful) behavior would make me the brunt of judgment and rejection.  What happens?  We moms (and dads to a lesser extent) become susceptible to the temptation to make our children into little projects.  We seek to control them and control the variables that we think impact their lives.  We stop trusting God and we start playing God.  When you read through the Romans passage, you don’t see God expressing his desire to fix us and make us whole so He will look good.  He gives love – He gives Himself – before we do anything to deserve it.  

So, we have to be aware of this insidious urge to see our children as a project and then to “work on them” all the time.  God expresses His relationship to us in words of delight.  He says we are the apple ofHis eye ; He says He delights in us ; and He doesn’t just say it, He shows it.  He is mindful that we are dust and doesn’t expect us to do what we just cannot do without Him.  And if you will remember here, without Him we can do nothing of value.   How would we expect more of our children?  

The proverbial saying that more is caught than taught is true.  How many times have you heard your children speaking to one another using a phrase or tone of voice either you or your spouse use?  The modeling we do as we live life is a large part of what will shape their personality and character.  God asks us, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?  How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?  You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”  When we focus on our children and their conduct, we can end up exacting behavior from them without even mastering that behavior in ourselves. 

As parents, we need to look at our own lives and our own character.  We need to focus on ourselves at least twice as diligently as any correcting we do of them.  And, likewise, we need not view ourselves as some project of God’s.  He surely says we are His workmanship, but He makes it abundantly clear that His love is unmerited and everlasting regardless of our behavior or progress.  He also makes it clear that we are His workmanship – as we abide in Him we will bear fruit.  He will do that in us as we abide.  Yes, we do participate in our own sanctification, but His love preempts any transformation and is never contingent upon our conduct.  He is in the business of "cleaning us up" but it isn't so that He will find us lovable. 

I’ll share a story here.  I have a dear friend from England and she is a delightful person to be around.   She is calm and sweet and very loving.  Long before I had my own children, My husband and I were with her family one day.  Her four-year-old at that time was worn out and as she was getting him into the van, he turned to her and vehemently said, “I hate you!”  She turned to him and said, “Oh, dearie, I love you.  I am sorry you feel you hate me right now.   How can I help you?”  I have to confess that I was in shock.  As my husband and I got in the car I told him that I, for one, was never going to have children who said, “I hate you” to me, and if they did, I would not allow it (you will remember I had not yet had children and I had a LOT of growing to do).  I still loved and admired my friend, but I just couldn’t imagine that she would answer such defiant and ugly behavior with such a tender and loving response.  I thought surely she was only permitting this behavior to go on and get worse.  Well, a number of years later (after I had my second son) these same friends were in the States and we all got together.  All three of her children were so calm, sweet and very loving.  They were the picture of her and her husband.  They carried themselves in much the same ways as their parents.  Each of them was unique, but they all bore a mark – a character – which was strikingly alike to their parents.  More had been caught than taught.   And since my friend was not one prone to raising her voice, expressing resentment or retaliation, but instead offered sympathy, care and concern for her children, they showed the mark of that care and gave it readily to others without any thought.  It was a part of who they were to act with sincere tenderness, as she did.  It had become their character.  She didn’t “work” on building this up in them.  If she “worked” on anything it was her own humble relationship to God and her ability to grow in Him and His love and to reflect His love to her own children despite their failings.  There were consequences in her home, but they were never primary and they were based in love, and they were given when needs had been factored in and security and love had been conveyed.  

So, for now, I’ll leave you with these two thoughts: 

Character development is rooted in love – God’s sacrificial love for unworthy, helpless sinners.  We can demonstrate that love to our children.  We’ll not muster it, but we can be the vessel by which He pours His transforming love out into their lives and hearts as we cling to Him and allow Him to work through us.  

More is caught than taught.  Our children will emulate our example and our hidden value systems and our quirks and so much more.  They will certainly learn from experience and from many other factors around them as well.  When it comes to character development, developing our own character is paramount to ever helping them develop their own.  We must resist the urge to turn our children into a project and instead embrace them and delight in them as we focus on our own abiding relationship with God.  

In my next post I’ll be discussing the role of consequences in character development …