Glorious Mud

In 2007, I taught a parenting forum at The Journey .  I posted the audio for that forum here, but The Journey has since cleaned up their media archives and this forum was taken down.  For some reason, though, this blog entry continues to be one of the most popular on my site. So, in an attempt to offer something of value, I am going to update this blog to reflect some of the best information we explored at that forum years ago.  Many blessings to you in your parenting journey. ..... Too often we as parents discipline out of wrong motives or for wrong goals. We want others to think we have it all together. We don't want to embarrassed in public places. We sure don't want to look like those "other" parents who have no control over their kids. How do we enter into parenting with true humility and raise "good" kids who are no more than legalistic moralists or moral relativists? The gospel tells us that we are both more broken and sinful than we care ...

Aren't grandparents the cutest thing ever? They stand in the background with their eyes sparkling as their grandchildren toddle around making strange cooing and gurgling noises. They buy way too much stuff for the kids at Christmas and then brush aside their own children's complaints with comments like, "Oh, dear, it is a grandmother's job to spoil her grandkids." The whole thing feels reminiscent of the Norman Rockwell painting, Freedom from Want - warm, fuzzy, and lots of good food. If you had grandparents like these, count yourself lucky. If your own parents are like these, your kids will have a richer and more joyful childhood because of them. Loving grandparents are one of life's great blessings, and our kids are likely to grow up thinking that our parents are perfect. The reality is, though, that we know our parents weren't perfect. Hopefully we can all assert that they did the best that they could (and, tragically, there ar...

Want advice on parenting? A quick search at Amazon.com for books on parenting will give you over 40,000 titles to chose from - each book promises to help you become a successful parent. You can learn how to enjoy scream-free parenting, how to avoid conflict by being a playful parent, how to be a positive parent or an unconditional parent, or you can even be a clinically-proven parent who can solve your kids' problems in just five weeks. The bottom line (as we all already know) is that there are no five easy steps to perfect parenthood. Even if we were given a perfect plan, we still wouldn't get it right because we are imperfect people raising imperfect children. There is just too much sin on everyone's part to hope for perfection. So if we have already been disqualified from being perfect parents, what can (and should) we hope for? Is it good enough to just be "good" parents? Well, that is certainly better than being bad parents - but it is not the best th...

What could MTV, the inventor of such kid-friendly shows as Beavis and Butthead, and George Barna, the famous Christian researcher and author of Raising Spiritual Champions , possibly have in common? In what universe could these two culturally polar-opposites possibly agree - especially about the American family? For once they may actually agree on something. When MTV conducted a survey of people aged 13-24 asking them what makes them happy, you would naturally expect to hear about things that are the glory of MTV: money, sex, drugs, and fame. The results, though, were surprisingly (or, maybe not so surprisingly) in line with what Christian researchers like Barna have been telling us for years: parents are the single most important factor in a child's happiness and sense of well-being. Nearly 3/4 of those surveyed said that their relationship with their parents was a significant source of happiness. When asked about what activities made them happy, the respondents li...