Parenting pride, frustrations, and just (?) causes for temper flares

I'm so proud that my children are likeable.  Unless people are routinely lying to my face, the general consensus seems to be that all three Carlton nuggets are smart, cute, kind, well-mannered, attentive, and fun.  They seem to make friends easily, charm adults, and take super amazing pictures (evidence <--).

So why is it that I so often find myself infuriated by these tiny, amazing, human beings?

Why do I get so quickly irritated with them?  How many "last nerves" have they proverbially trampled to render me so easily frustrated?

Total transparency: bedtime is my least favorite time of the day, followed closely by time to leave for school and mealtimes that involve anything other than cereal, mac n cheese, hotdogs, or spaghetti.  My oldest moves only at "Carlton" speed (Tara's little inside joke, maybe a subtle dig at yours truly's laid-back nature, not sure if I should be offended, probably irrelevant if you're still reading this parenthetical).  My middle child moves only at lightning speed, with thunderous volume and passionate intensity, but also with a squirrel-like attention span.  My 5-month-old is super pleasant and smiley and chatty... until it's time to sleep, and then she only wants to complain and be held, NOT be put down.

Why is it that, with any one of these three cherubs, my warm adoration can shrivel into cold irritability?  Is it that my expectations haven't been met?  Is it that my authority has been challenged, or simply ignored?  Is it that I myself am constantly struggling not to be late and am frustrated with my own inability to be more effective with my time?  Is it that I crave uninterrupted time with Tara and have a hard time surrendering my wants to disruptions?

Yes, yes, yes, and yes.

My point in sharing this is not to rant or complain.  I'm not typing in a furious type of catharsis.  I actually don't want to write on this topic because it reveals far more about my heart than I'm honestly comfortable sharing.

The resounding theme: I want.  James wisely pointed out that our desires are at the heart of all our conflicts (Jas 4.1).  I want.  I want to be respected.  I want my kids to say, "Yes, Papa!"  I want them to stop what they're doing and answer when they hear my voice calling their names.  I want them to respect my wishes and instructions -- even when I'm not watching.  I want them to behave a certain way.  I want their reputations to shine (which really means I want to be known as a great parent who has clearly done everything right).  When I sit down to do some reading, to watch a movie with Tara, or try for the 36th time to finish a blog post and the interruptions begin... suddenly the children I love and adore become obstacles to what I really want.

These wants are all just symptoms of one singular, unhealthy craving in my heart for rule and dominion.  It's the sinful core of my problem.  My pride and self-interest tell me that I deserve to be treated in a certain way, and that if I am not receiving recognition or my expectations are not being met, then I have every right to be grouchy.  Tim Keller used to call pride "cosmic plagiarism."  Being proud invariably means I am taking credit for something that rightly belongs only to the Maker, the Ruler, the King and Lord over all.  All of my self-promotion and authority grabbing is just usurpation, insurrection, and failed coup de tat -- ultimately foolish, given the supremacy and of the one who is truly worthy of acclaim and adoration.

Me demanding my kids' respect is a little bit like a mote of dust drifting across the sun and being surprised it didn't generate a solar eclipse.

Me expecting uninterrupted time all to myself is a fatally flawed assumption that I deserve anything at all.

Maybe it's not wrong in itself to want respect or intentionally set aside time for your own purposes.  But when those good things become ultimate things, the ugliness of our hearts is exposed.  As parents, we must beware our tendencies or run the risk of seeing them rudely mirrored in little faces and voices.  I don't think of myself as being a particularly demanding person, but -- just like everyone else -- when what I really want is denied or delayed, all of sudden my heart begins clamoring for fulfillment.  Unchecked, that inevitably comes out in my attitude and language.  If I find myself sensitive to the demanding natures of my kids, chances are it's because I recognize the sound of entitlement all too well.

Seeing these things in myself, I am trying to practice three things with my children.  I am terrible at all of them.

(1) I am trying to create intentional time with them.  Psalm 90.12 reminds us to seek the Lord's eternal perspective, learning to "number our days" by His kind instruction, so that we may gain a "heart of wisdom."  Time in general is fleeting, and time with young children is even more so.  I distinctly remember thinking, when Zeke was approaching his first birthday, that we still had four more long years of him at home until we had to start figuring out the school thing.  Well, it's 2024, and he's halfway through his kindergarten year.

Intentionally choosing time with my kids doesn't guarantee they won't still demand more of it or automatically honor my schedule, but it does check some important boxes for my heart.

• It forces me to remember that "my" time is not really mine anyway.  I am merely a steward of the minutes and hours God has kindly chosen to allot for me.  If I can surrender the audacious concept of "me time," I can be much more free in giving time away.
  
• It softens my heart toward my children.  In fact, the more time I choose to give them (before they even ask for it) makes me less inclined to be irritated with them when they demand more.
  
• It provides me with some of the most important life-on-life, teachable moments.  I can lecture my kids in passing, on my way to do whatever seemingly more important thing I need to do... or I can choose to be fully present with them, modeling behaviors and language that I want them to emulate, and just enjoying the little people that God has given me to love.
  
• It helps me learn about my kids and understand them as unique image-bearers.  Lingering is a learned skill in western culture.  How can I appreciate the God-given personalities each of my children possess if I don't linger long enough to appreciate them?
  
• It causes me to be cognizant of what being "fully present" with them actually means.  If I say I'm going to play with them and then spend half of that time on my phone, they will quickly let me know that they're "waiting for me."  Intentional time is different than halfhearted time.
  

(2) I am trying to be clear and firm in my instructions.  As intelligent as my children are, I can't really be upset with them if I've done a bad job communicating.  I can't assume they should just know intuitively what I expect of them, or go nonverbal when I'm frustrated (which I have a tendency to do).  If I'm hoping they will read my mind or pick up on my body language, I'm setting all of us up for failure.  "Clear and firm" doesn't imply domineering, condescending tones, nor does it excuse threatening language.  I simply want to do better at patiently and directly communicating to my children God's priorities, Mama and Papa's rules, age-appropriate responsibilities, and the privileges we want to enjoy as a family.

Some might argue we're just setting the bar too high and bringing frustration upon ourselves.  To the contrary, we've learned that giving small humans lanes in which to run helps them to learn and flourish.  It would not be loving them well to tell them the world is their oyster and boundaries don't matter.  By contrast, clear and firm instruction -- given humbly and compassionately -- creates a safe environment with no hidden expectations and standards that keep children AND parents accountable to one another.

(3) I am trying to be gracious and humble in both granting and asking forgiveness.  I can't hold grudges against my children and still believe the best of them.  Even where there are patterns of sin and disobedience, I can't just expect them to fail, and then let them know that I knew they were going to fail when they do.  Granting forgiveness even to repeat-offender children truly means giving them a blank slate, partnered with the proactive and instructive wisdom of gently helping them learn where their potential pitfalls will be in the future.  On the flip-side, if I'm not willing to ask forgiveness of my kids (or my wife) when I myself screw up, I have no right to counsel them to do the same with one another, or to demonstrate remorse when I am correcting them.  Can I demand repentance of them when they break the rules if I don't show them how to do it by my own example?  And, frankly, if I can't choose to overlook some wrongdoings on my children's part and give second and third chances to get it right, have I myself really understood the unfathomable grace of Jesus Christ?  Showing and seeking grace are practices that help keep me soft in the face of disobedience and defiance.

To be completely honest, I don't know if these three things are making much difference in me at present.  But they are long-term areas of focus that, Lord willing, will bear mature fruit in me and in my children as we continue to grow and change.

To be clear on my title for this post, I don't have any just cause for being quick to anger.  The Scripture clearly counsels me against that (Jas 1.19), even when it feels natural and proportionate.  My wrath does not bring about God's justice on my behalf, make my children behave any better, or impute to them any righteousness before God.  Pride and frustration do make for effective but dangerous kindling, however.  The faster I root them out and expose them for what they are, the more effective the cleansing waters of the Spirit's sanctification in dousing sin's potential conflagrations.

Besides, time's too short to stay angry with those nuggets.  I know... they ARE pretty darn cute.

Who makes the woeful heart to sing

As a teenager, I spent a lot of time feeling sorry for myself.

I didn't have a miserable childhood.  I didn't suffer any overwhelming loss.  I wasn't disliked or unpopular.  I simply chose to devote a gratuitous amount of time and energy to my own bloated insecurities -- to comparing myself to other people and envying them of their confidence.

I remember slipping out of church immediately after services instead of talking with my friends in the foyer, so that they would notice my absence and come looking for me.  I'd sit morosely in corners and scribble melodramatic song lyrics in a duct-taped binder.  I refused and even scoffed at encouragement.

I did a lot of that kind of thing.

In sum, I spent a whole lot of time thinking about myself, which is the very definition of pride.  Even though I didn't feel good about myself, I didn't have a problem thinking only about myself.  Perhaps John Ortberg said it best, that at its deepest level, "pride is the [loveless] choice to exclude both God and other people from their rightful place in our hearts."  Pride is forgetting (or ignoring) the Christian's responsibility to love God and others above self (Mark 12.30-31).  Looking back now, it's painful to recall.  I'm not proud of any of the time I wasted.  I'm not proud of the fact that all of that self-centeredness would ultimately come to a head in miserable dating relationships -- one failure after another, all because I could only think about me.

In Knowing God, J I Packer asserts that when people come to know God truly -- as opposed to simply knowing about Him -- their "losses and 'crosses' cease to matter to them; what they have gained [in Christ] simply banishes these things from their minds."

What I went through certainly wasn't a loss or a cross.  It was my own juvenile selfishness.  However, selfishness is simply the idolatry of self -- the worship of me -- though it will look different for everyone.  For me, it manifested as a "woe is me" type of mentality.  For others, it might be the "I can do no wrong" or "I have all the answers" thought process, or maybe a sense of entitlement.

All of these are symptoms of the same disease -- a disease for which only Christ has the cure.  And although my selfishness wasn't necessarily a loss or a cross, it was still a burden that I carried: the lingering remnant of sin in me that I refused to allow Christ to "banish" from my mind.

One of the things you hear when you're feeling sorry for yourself is the expression of tough love: "Just get over it."  I don't necessarily disagree with the thought, but I'm cautious to express it in that way to people who are struggling through some of the same things I did.  Even if the sentiment is well-intentioned, it can sound immensely callous, and Paul's admonition to believers is that we should always communicate with compassion -- even when it's a hard truth that needs to be told (Eph 4.15).  Packer's purposeful use of the word "banish" is not necessarily that we should just "get over" our weaknesses, but that the surpassing worth of truly knowing Christ should outweigh and eliminate them.  In other words, truly knowing Christ eclipses the value of all the world's trinkets and makes letting go of any degree of hurt possible.

If, instead of hyper-analyzing my faults, I base my understanding of who I am upon who I know Him to be, suddenly I am capable of relinquishing my flaws as weaknesses He can enable me to overcome.  If, instead of being resentful toward God for the struggles in my life, I am overwhelmed with thanksgiving for the fact that He has lifted the debt of sin from my shoulders, it becomes fully possible to drop everything I am holding onto and follow Him immediately.

However, there is a mis-implication in the "just get over it" sentiment.  While the power we access through the Holy Spirit is perfectly capable of wiping the slate clean, we still walk in our flesh and live in a world of loss and heartache.  The "letting go" process will vary for each person in terms of length and intensity.  However, the more closely an individual knows Christ, the easier and more direct that process can be.  Perhaps those pains will never fully subside, but my love for Christ and His love for me will make them manageable and secondary -- mere inconveniences instead of the throbbing, unmitigated injuries they were without Him.

There's a well-known hymn that we frequently sing at Fellowship Bible Church.  It's a composition that particularly highlights Jesus' sovereign authority over nature, His surpassing glory, and His matchless worth to the individual.  It beautifully paints the idea of a big-picture, limitless, omnipotent God who is also intensely personal.

Fairest Lord Jesus, Ruler of all nature
O Thou of God and man the Son
Thee will I cherish, Thee will I honor
Thou, my soul’s glory, joy, and crown

Fair are the meadows, fairer still the woodlands
Robed in the blooming garb of spring
Jesus is fairer, Jesus is purer
Who makes the woeful heart to sing

Fair is the sunshine, fairer still the moonlight
And all the twinkling starry host
Jesus shines brighter, Jesus shines purer
Than all the angels heaven can boast

All fairest beauty, heavenly and earthly
Wondrously, Jesus, is found in Thee
None can be nearer, fairer, or dearer
Than Thou, my Savior, art to me

Beautiful Savior! Lord of all the nations!
Son of God and Son of Man!
Glory and honor, praise, adoration
Now and forever more be Thine

I typically draw the congregation's attention to the second verse.  Often when we find ourselves in painful, sorrowful places, it's easy to allow other things to become our solace.  Solitude.  Natural beauty.  Earthly relationships.  Time.  Even the distraction of entertainment.  And yet Jesus, the One who is fairer and purer than all of these things, is the one who is truly capable of causing woeful hearts to sing.  His eternal, faithful character should be our comfort and our consolation above all else this world can offer.

As a teenager, Jesus was never my consolation -- though I might have claimed He was, though I might even have called out in the midst of my frustrations and anxieties for Him to remove them from me.  I found cheap consolation in my friends' sympathy or simply in distraction -- videogames, books, TV, phone conversations.  And yet the person of Jesus -- the man who lived and died sinlessly on my behalf, the God who ordained my finite number of breaths and even allowed my emotional insecurities in order to make me realize my need for Him -- is the consolation I should have taken.

Knowing Him causes all my losses and crosses to decrease.  Letting go of hurt, especially hurt gained through the malice or carelessness of others, is only truly possible through the restorative power of overwhelming grace.  Letting go of false notions about self-worth and relinquishing selfishness are only possible through intimately knowing Christ.  He outweighs whatever I may have gained in this life.  He banishes any lingering sense of earthly loss from my heart, promising and proving that those things no longer have any claim upon me.  Temporary sorrow no longer has the opportunity to preoccupy my thoughts now that I am filled with Christ Himself.

None can be nearer, fairer, or dearer.  He makes the woeful heart to sing.

Practically, how do I overcome failure and pride?

There are three basic principles of developing Christian fortitude -- that is, a long-suffering, Kingdom-focused attitude entrenched in the grace of God. 

1. I cannot live in my success
2. I cannot live in my failure
3. I must prioritize eternity over the temporary

An eternal perspective is only possible to maintain when I am not consumed with anger over my current predicament, or when I am not enamored with the experience of life.  But how, practically, do we change perspective?  Is it really as simple as "just getting over it?"

Arrogance and regret are intimately juxtaposed.  They are two sides of the same coin -- a coin called pride.  Let's make no mistake about it: both are applications of inflated self-worth and really are the ultimate forms of self-idolization.

When we are consumed by regret, we are refusing to pull ourselves out of the cesspool of self-pity.  We evaluate our problem as too great for God's grace to handle.  We think our sin is special, something no one else has ever committed or could ever possibly understand.  We think it is our right to be miserable over our shortcomings and mistakes.  We take ownership of them instead of surrendering them to the One who has already taken them upon Himself.

Arrogance functions in the exact same way as its twin, but at the opposite end of the spectrum.  Like self-pity, arrogance is incurably comparative and evaluates everything on the basis of what I've done versus what others have accomplished.  It regards blessings as achievements: the mountaintop on which I stand is a right or an entitlement, something I deserve.  It squashes the needs of others in order to meet the needs of self.  Maybe arrogance is the easier aspect of pride to identify, but both sides of the coin are ultimately only concerned with the coin itself, and not the function for which it was minted.

What I'm getting at is this.  To some blunt degree, the answer is yes: it is as simple as "just getting over it."  In either extreme -- arrogance or regret -- we simply need to stop thinking so highly of ourselves, though it's a goal that is certainly much easier to state than to do.  For that reason, I've come up with three practical R's of "just getting over it" that I think are helpful for narrowing down the specific steps we must take in order to progress in our battles with pride and failure.

Replace

Paul spoke in Colossians 3 about putting on and putting off -- in other words, replacing old behavior with new behavior.  It's not enough to simply stop lying: becoming a truth-teller necessarily requires us to actively speak truth.  When I'm struggling with lust, it's not enough to simply remove an internet connection or end a sinful relationship: maintaining purity requires me to replace lustful thoughts with pure ones and sinful relationships with wholesome ones.  In the same manner, I need to replace obsession over failure with new goals.  I need to repurpose my regret into a glorified object lesson.  Failure is only failure if we don't learn from it.

As it pertains to arrogance, I need to replace the idols I possess of my own ability and success with humility.  I need to reflect on my failures in order to remind myself of the weaknesses I still possess in order to allow Christ's strength to be revealed in those areas.  I need to return to the basic principles of the gospel: that all have sinned and fallen short, and that there is no other name given among men that can produce salvation.  I need to remember that my identity has been replaced with His -- that it is no longer I, but Christ who lives in me, and that my old state of being has been replaced by a brand new creation.  I need to remember that my ambition has been replaced with righteousness.  I need to replace self-contentment with dependence on Him.

Re-Focus

The process of re-evaluation means a complete re-orientation of perspective.  When I focus on the present and make my current goals my priority, or obsess over the past and revere the what-ifs as my gods of regret, I make myself the center of my own worldview.  Celebrating my state of affairs is to cross the line from simply being thankful for a temporal blessing to making comfortable living the end of my pursuits.  Regretting the past not only shackles me to self-pity but also presumes that I am the master of my destiny: it halts forward progress.

On the other hand, when I prioritize eternity by making the most of the present via devotion to study of the Word and prayer and living as though my actions have eternal consequences, I return God to the center of my worldview -- to the place He so justly deserves.  Re-focusing my perspective isn't as simple as just looking forward.  It means radical transformation.  It means seeing with new eyes, not just changing my prescription.

Reveal

Perhaps the greatest and simultaneously most underrated tool of Christian living is fellowship.  We take it for granted and assign it to social functions, but fellowship means accountability.  Nothing kills a sinful desire like confessing it to a peer; conversely, nothing feeds a sinful desire like concealing it.  But we don't want anyone to know what we're carrying with us.  Perhaps we fear they won't understand, or worry that maybe they'll judge us.  Maybe we want to just sit in our own pit of self-loathing and feel sorry for ourselves.  And that's the reason why we relegate "fellowship" to meals after a church service: because we're far too proud to utilize the actual benefits it promises.

In order to move on from failure, we need to consciously counteract the tendency to conceal.  If I have guilt weighing me down, I need to confess that to someone who will not only pray for my healing but also positively encourage me in the steps of restoration.  If I am lazy and contented, I need someone who will challenge me to live purposefully, to radically amputate the areas of my life that are causing my nearsightedness.  If I am arrogant because of the things I've accomplished, I need someone to remind me that the only thing I should be boasting in is the work of Christ in my life, because all of my achievements stacked upon one another don't fill the hollow depths of my soul which only God's grace could fill.

Pride is a disease with lots of symptoms: self-pity and arrogance are only two of them.  If there are warning signs of this struggle, then I need to reveal that tendency to someone who will walk in humility alongside me.

~*~

Developing Christian fortitude means living for eternity.

Living for eternity means prioritizing my desire to be with Christ over my desire for the insubstantial things of this world.

Living for eternity means my failures are a moot point and my successes all belong to Christ anyway.

Living for eternity means that my works and the fruit I bear point to His righteousness in me.  It means that the cup of my life runs over with the grace He lavished upon me, a fountain of life of which I am but a conduit, designed to reach into the lives around me.

Living for eternity means living for the Kingdom.

___________________________

Aren't there healthy applications of pride and regret?

The answer is yes, but the margin for error in either category is enormous.

Regret communicates the idea of a poor choice, so if regret is the motivator to never make that same choice again, then yes - it can be positive.  But regret has this way of hanging around and becoming debilitating.  It can sink us into depression or cause us to hesitate at an opportunity to make the same choice again.  In that regard, regret is only positive if it is a motivator to righteousness.  However, a much better motivator to righteousness is the desire to be like Christ, so if regret is the stepping stone we immediately leave behind in order to get across the river, it certainly has a positive function.  Carrying a bag of regrets on my back throughout life, however, is to be consumed with my own failure.

In the same vein, being proud of something is certainly different than being boastful.  There's an appropriate level of recognition of a job well-done or a skill honed through years of practice.  However, an appropriate level of pride is tempered with humility: someone who possesses great skill is fully aware of his imperfections, of a continual need to improve.  In that regard, accepting a compliment for an achievement is not the equivalent of being arrogant.  Arrogance doesn't recognize the need for compliments or the need to improve.