Don't exasperate them.

My girls are three and a half next month. I have had a very clear realization that this is going to be an incredibly important year at home with them. This is the last year I will have all three kids in my care every single day. Suddenly I feel like this is a mini version of their senior year of high school and everything I encounter feels like I am about to say goodbye.

I flipped through a magazine the other day looking for luggage for the kids and saw preschool backpacks looking all grown up on the page next to the elementary kid ones. Then there’s the buses. We rode the bus up in Whistler last week to get down to the village from the condo and the girls thought they were on cloud nine. They marched down to the bus stop, and once they got on they were all wide-eyed and gitty excited about their adventure. Grace thought it was cool to sit in the back of the bus, while Daddy taught Kanah how to pull the wire to request a stop. They are learning the difference between spotting a city bus and a school bus. Then another reminder is our library time. I keep finding little books like Maisy Goes to Preschool etc about what classes are like and what it’s like to have a teacher. And encountering pictures of backpacks, driving by city buses and looking at library books (among other things) are sparking little senior year mom missings in me. (I don’t think that’s a word, but I like it, so now it is!). Missings that make me feel excited to have them close in my care this year, excited to be doing this little preschool co-op at home with two other mommy friends.

In thinking about where my girls are at, it has suddenly occurred to me lately that they are in a very sweetly packaged and protected season of childhood and that I do not know for certain how much longer this exact stage of innocence may last. I know that it is not promised that nothing will go wrong or that a circumstance or trial may arise that would be difficult for them, but generally speaking – acknowledging that we live in a fallen world – this is a precious window of childhood.

I was thinking recently through my own struggle with anxiety, fears and control in the last few months and how hard that has been on me mentally. And what a literal battle it is for my mind and heart, so that I can even get to enjoyment of life and time with family and conversations over coffee, etc. And I thought back over my span of 32 years of life, seeing that my struggle internally has seemed to increase over time. And I see it happening with others around me. Around age 28 and up I have struggled through anxieties around children, how to parent, how enjoying marriage while dealing with increased responsibilities, and how to battle some of my own personality and ways I think about things. The five or so years before that introduced struggles of missing my family from long distance, living in a new city, figuring out how to do life without close friendships, and learning how to navigate the work world. Before that, how to handle the college burden of thinking about your future and understanding what you were made to do with your life, while struggling in comparing myself to others. In junior high and high school my stresses revolved around performance in school, people pleasing, rejection in friendships, acceptance of how God made my body and navigating relationships with peers. Even in elementary school I remember little stresses and struggles around friendships and disappointing teachers/parents, and certain social interactions.

All this to say, I am not sure when it begins, but over the course of life, we struggle. And I would say too that we struggle increasingly. That even with Christ and his bounty of blessings in my lap, he is helping me, counseling me through the struggle of life as it comes in waves. Peter would say (in 1 Peter 4:12) to not be surprised at the painful trials I am suffering as though something strange were happening to me. Struggles are not strange – they are familiar and frequent.

Yet my children now at age 3 and a half (and Salem at one and a half) are enjoying something completely unique and wonderful for them. And it’s not that I was totally clueless to their childlike happiness or to the fact that children generally don’t have much stress. (I feel like I learn that everyday when we’re trying to get out the door and they are bouncing on pillows and taking their time eating their cereal!) But for me personally, as their mom, and looking specifically at their time and stage of life, the Lord seemed to reveal to me in a more illuminating, and in some senses heart-breaking, way that they are in a special season of ENJOYMENT of life.

He revealed this precious truth to me alongside of a growing conviction for me as a mother around Ephesians 6:4 which says, “Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.”

If any of you have read Shepherding a Child’s Heart of Instructing a Child’s Heart, you immediately recognize this verse. Parenting is about instruction, which is teaching my children about godly truths in both planned as well as (mostly) spontaneous times as we do life together. Parenting is also about training/disciplining as the “folly bound up in their hearts” is exposed in their disobedience and we need to take time to correct. That is not the focus of my point here, but worth noting first. So, we are after those two things as parents to our kids for certain. But right before that there is a clear opposing idea about parenting: exasperating our children. It is specifically written to fathers, perhaps because the Lord knows that men struggle more with anger tendencies generally, and also it is because he is first entrusting the instruction and discipline to the fathers since they lead the families. And he is pointing out that the opposite of that way is to just randomly and emotionally exasperate our kids. So though the Lord addressed the fathers with that, that also happens to be an issue I deal with inside. I mean, I exasperate myself for goodness sakes! . When I am not carefully, wisely leading my children with my words, I easily think my impatience, anger, carelessness, raised voice etc. could all fall under the overarching category of “exasperating.”

Exasperate: to irritate or provoke to a high degree, annoy extremely, increase intensity. (Synonyms: incense, anger, inflame, irritate). The origin has roots in the words “rough” and “harsh.”

Convicting.

The Lord has very appropriately put this verse and specifically that one word on my heart: Kelly, do not exasperate your little children. Instead grow them up in my ways.

We have a chalk board in our kitchen just for bible verses and usually I put a new one every week but recently when it came time to change the weekly verse, I realized I needed to keep one at the bottom permanently for me and then to keep giving the children new ones.

Mine is from Proverbs 17:27 “A man of knowledge uses word with restraint, and a man of understanding is even-tempered.”

This is what I sense him pairing with his encouragement from Ephesians 6:4. But alllll of this good instruction and encouragement from the Lord is not just a big DON’T. The Lord has also graciously, because of his Fatherly love for the children he has entrusted to my care, shown me that precious innocence that they dance in right now. He has shown me the length of my years alongside of the increasing closeness between he and I as I have experienced more and more life of struggles. And with that he has also shown me the care-free joy my little creations are gifted to experience for such a short time. Such a short season!

And finally he has whispered to me…

Don’t steal that from them by exasperating them! Be faithful to grow them in my instruction and discipline because you love them, but never provoke them. As far as it is up to you, let them dance in this sweetness of life without leaving them frustrated. I will enable you to hold all of the cares in their world, so that they may be without regard for the tangles of life. Rejoice with them, for this is what it will be like to be in the Kingdom.