Grace and Gumballs - How the Gospel Informs Parenting

Last Friday wasn't an unusual day except for the fact that my normally always-complaining child amped up his complaining to legendary heights.

We started the day with a tennis lesson, which is fun and active and led by a coach who knows how to get kids playing quickly and well. It was sunny outside and the courts were dry. Really, what was there to complain about?

He found it. It was too cold/tennis balls were too slow/his arm hurt/the sun was in his eyes/he just wanted to be home playing Legos and by the way, why aren't we home playing Legos???

Coupled with the complaining was rudeness directed at our coach, which earned him a couple of laps around the court during the lesson. By the time we got into the car, I was having to talk myself down from the angry parental lecture ledge, knowing his heart was not in a place to hear me anyway.

There's always a struggle with the Dark Side, isn't there?

We drove across the busy road to the grocery store, and as I parked I gave him and his sister typical mom instructions: "I'm just running in for a few things. Do not ask me for anything while we're in the store. Just a few things. Got it?"

I bet you can guess what my complainer did next. I'm pretty sure we hadn't even passed the gumball machines before he was begging me for a quarter for the gumball machines. I was seriously going to lose it with this kid, but I took the high ground and kept quiet. I prayed and asked God to help me not lose my cool. 

Having grabbed the few items I needed, I gave complaining boy and his sister permission to head over to the gumball machines while I checked out. Nice of me, wasn't it? Apparently not. My discontented offspring grumbled all the way to the row of machines-that-dispense-junk, adding a few "I wish I had a quarter" statements in for good measure. 

As we left the store to head to the parking lot, the discontent one excitedly informed me that he had turned the mechanisms for each and every machine and, "LOOK!" A shiny green gumball lay in his hand. "I didn't even need a quarter! The machine gave me one for free!"

What kind of a lesson is that? Be an ungrateful grump and get a gumball? I shook my head and wondered what exactly God was doing and then, right there in the middle of that grocery store parking lot, it hit me. I turned to my complainer and I said, 

"Son, you do not deserve that gumball." His face dropped as he contemplated the possibility that I was now going to take the candy away from him. "You have done nothing but complain this morning. You were disrespectful to Coach Weber and you completely disregarded the instructions I gave you as we left the car. But that gumball? It's God's grace in your life.

We are all as discontent and self-focused as you have been today, and that's exactly why we all need Jesus. Do you see? Jesus didn't give us what we deserved. He gave us the gift of forgiveness and life and grace. He gave us the gumball when we deserved to sit out and stew in our sin.

When you are ever tempted to think that you are the center of the world, remember the gumball. You've been given forgiveness for your sin and a gumball of grace and eternal life on top of it."

It didn't take an angry mom lecture to turn the heart of my complainer that day. I always thought it would. I spent two decades of parenting thinking that if I pounded my kids with the law, they would straighten up and do what I and God wanted them to do. But that's not the way it works! It's the gospel - the good news - the hope of Christ, the totally upending truth of what He did for us - that grabs our hearts and squeezes them tightly and turns our heads toward Him.

I saw it clearly in my son. His eyes widened, his shoulders relaxed, and his need for so many things he thought might make him happy that particular morning slipped away in the blinding light of grace and mercy. 

Is it a formula? Nope. There aren't any. But it's the hope of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and it is more than enough!

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“There is more grace in Christ than sin in you.”

— Burk Parsons

Do you need more to read about how grace and the gospel inform our parenting? 

 How to Discipline a 4-Year-Old Through 10-Year-Old With Grace

Kids and Grace and Discipline

Parenting With Grace and What That Actually Looks Like

Abundant Grace and Teaching Moments

Fear-Driven Parenting and the Grace That Sets Us Free

What Does Homeschooling From a Place of Grace Look Like?

You can get FULL ACCESS to bonus interviews, exclusive content, and cool free stuff by joining the HomeschoolingIRL community, and you can do that by subscribing (and telling your friends about us, too!)

Five For Friday: When You Need to Be Reminded of the Gospel

From around the web, here are five resources that accompany our latest episode, Christ in the Chaos. We think you'll find each stop very encouraging this weekend:

[Gospel 1]: The Gospel is a Story - Paul Tripp

Where to begin? What do we mean when we say that we must always return to the simplicity of the gospel? Start here, with Paul Tripp's explanation of where we find our hope.

In Need of a Redeemer - Jim Applegate

And then go here. It's the beginning of a life-changing series out of Exodus, and it helped Fletch and Kendra exit their own self-relying works-based religiosity. Spoiler alert: Grace wins! 

Where Can I Find Joy? - Kimm Crandall

A beautiful and hopeful post by our guest on this last podcast, Kimm Crandall.

Ladder Christianity - Tullian Tchvidjian

"The strength of God alone can liberate us from the burden of needing to be strong."

Good Parenting - Jessica Thompson

We want so badly for our good parenting to be what makes our kids who they are. But the truth is, all we really can do is point our kids to the One who shapes their souls.

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All the Ways I Got Parenting Wrong

By the time I had our firstborn when I was 22 years old, I had a solid ten years of babysitting under my belt. I'd lived with a family as a nanny during college, taken a job with a professional nanny agency right after I graduated (we needed the money and my music degree wasn't paying any bills yet), and considered myself a well-seasoned pro.

That was my first mistake. Over a decade of changing diapers, playing with babies and toddlers, entertaining elementary kids, and giving parents a well-deserved break, I developed an overwhelming sense of pride in myself and this ability to care for children. I had this down, and I was going to do it right. Without God's help, ostensibly.

We took Growing Kids God's Way parenting classes, and the name just sort of lays it out there - we were doing it GOD'S WAY. Sheesh. I listened to Focus on the Family and read parenting book after book after book by Christian authors. For a decade, at least, my head was in those books and my eye was on my methods, but my heart was not listening to the still small voice of the Holy Spirit.

My heart listened to me.

That was my second mistake. I know my kids saw the ugly pride and my self-reliance but they were kids and could not explain the self-righteousness they were living with. They just knew that this mom who poured her life into them was not relying on the Holy Spirit she liked to talk about. 

And then there was the crib tent. Holy smokes, how I liked to roll my eyes at the people who used crib tents to keep their kids in bed at nap time. I would mumble something about "not being able to properly train their children" under my breath, and the hideous root of pride would send out shoots and tendrils into my consciousness, invading any place that showed light and choking out the grace and mercy of God. 

Until one afternoon when I found myself weeping just outside of our 18-month-old's room. She was our 6th child, which meant I also was raising and homeschooling a 3-year-old, a 5-year-old, a 7-year-old, a 9-year-old, and an 11-year-old. She would not, for love nor money, stay in that crib, and we fought it out for at least 45 minutes before every nap and bedtime. This was the beginning of the end of my rope. I shuffled back to my own bedroom, weary, exhausted, and defeated. 

That evening, my kind and compassionate friend delivered her crib tent to me so that I could get some much-needed sleep. After constructing it to fit our little one's crib, I blew a kiss to my toddler safely enclosed in her crib tent, and marveled when she waved her fat little hand, smiled, then lay down to go to sleep.

Just like that, I was humbled by a crib tent. 

That toddler is now a giggly 10-year-old, and while we've launched two sons into adulthood, we've still got 6 kids and teens at home. Last month, I was reminded of the crib tent when I placed an order on Amazon for a child safety leash.

What do you think the mother who struggles with the idea of using a crib tent feels about walking around in public with a kid on a leash? Yeah, that. But this was for our brain-injured 6-year-old who darts into traffic and jumps off of divider walls. I have lived in fear of losing this boy in a crowded place for the past 6 years of his life.

We test drove our happy little rainbow-colored child safety leash at the mall one afternoon, and Mighty Joe was, for the most part, happy to be attached to me. He was safe. It was good.

Further humbling for a mom prone to rely on her own "right" choices. But further refining beauty, too. The most beautiful thing to come from knocking down my self-erected idol of parenting perfection? Adult kids who have forgiven me, text me, laugh with me, and partner in prayer for our family. Teens who want to be in our home, hang out with me, lay their burdens down at the end of the day and ask for my support. Redemption.

That's our God: He takes a prideful, arrogant human mom and redeems her mistakes, exchanging them for something lovely and rich.

What's your parenting mistake? He'll redeem that, too.

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When Homeschool Speakers Forget Jesus

Kendra Fletcher, Homeschooling Speaker and Gospel-Forgetter

Fletch is the comedian, and I'm the muller.

I ask him to write humorous posts but it's usually 11 p.m. and he looks at me with eyes that squint and say, "Girl. I have to get up at 5:30 tomorrow morning so I can go pull tartar out of people's teeth." 

We're coming off a weekend of hosting my brother's family from Texas. They're all athletes and thinkers; ripped and brainy. My brother has two master's degrees and is about to finish his doctorate. I asked him what he's going to do with it and he said he just likes to study. He's trying to decide what to get his next doctorate in. Yeah.

Their firstborn is at Princeton on a full-ride scholarship. Their second son just got a $200,000 ROTC scholarship to the University of Richmond.

My sister-in-law (his wife) says, "Everyone in my house likes to study. They're all quiet and reading and taking notes and I'm all like, 'I'll just go walk the dog.'"

Me too. I'm just over here trying to get the pizza not to burn and really hoping I didn't kill the tomato plants on the back porch. And my two college kids going to average schools but without debt suddenly look a little shabby. I mean, we were thrilled when they decided to keep going to school and didn't have to take any student loans, but in light of the Princeton nephew and the $200,000 nephew, we look pretty lame. 

I left my brother and his family with Fletch on Saturday so I could go speak at the CHEA/SCOPE convention (all those letters - California Home Educators . . .  Sacramento . . . something). I gave three workshops, 2 of which were nicely attended/packed and one that had one attendee. ONE. It was the workshop in between the nicely attended/packed workshops, and it was a big-time ego deflater. 

Here's where the homeschool speaker forgets Jesus: 

I had a great day with my family on Friday eating, chatting, going to see a big parade of classic cars, dishing up ice cream. I got up on Saturday and had a delightful 90 minute drive with a friend and no kid interruptions. I spoke about grace and crisis and the gospel. It was terrific! And then, the ONE person shows up. Suddenly I'm the biggest loser the homeschool convention circuit has ever seen. 

I had to give that whole workshop to ONE person because they record them and all the people who chose to go hear all the other speakers in that time slot can buy the workshop recordings from the loser speakers like me. I'm like the workshop consolation prize.

Then I walked into my next workshop and it was packed. PACKED. The door wouldn't shut. The strollers didn't fit. People kept coming in. Dang! Now I'm like the Oprah Winfrey of the homeschool convention! People like me! I bet I could get Starbucks to name a drink after me. 

Do you know what I told those people in that PACKED workshop? I told them that homeschooling won't save their kids. I told them that Jesus paid it all. I told them that their identity isn't in how well they parent, what curriculum they choose, if they homeschool, or how their kids turn out. I told them that Jesus is our identity. That what He did on Calvary is what gives us our worth, our value, and our significance.

But I didn't tell that to the ONE. I didn't say it until after I sat down and she and I talked face to face and I told her what a loser I am. I said it then because it took me that whole embarrassing workshop to remember it myself. Kendra, your identity isn't in a packed workshop. It isn't in how well you speak, what you impart, or how shining an example you might be.

You, too, reader.

In the pitiful middle sandwiched between the good times, don't forget: you are loved, worthy, significant, and valuable because your identity is in Jesus, and He is perfect. 

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