Saturday morning, ten o’clock or so. We are enjoying one of those rare thaws in mid-January that feel like spring and smell like fall, that give us all a glimpse of a sun we haven’t seen for weeks on end. My wife opened the windows in the kitchen, as if for the first time, as a sojourner in a weary land. Thirsty, she lifted her head in a silent, joyful acknowledgement of the light and breeze that flowed through and around her at the opening. Sun and air – graces in their own right, best enjoyed when they are so infrequent.
I whined a little because it was cold as well as fresh, but it was difficult to argue with how glorious it smelled and felt to flood our apartment with sunny air. So after the requisite disapproving noises I snuggled into my cable-knit sweater and large mug of coffee and kept my thoughts to myself.
We had established a steady routine of Saturday-morning-only cartoons months before. The contract was agreeable to both parties – several hours of their favorite shows on one side of the house in exchange for several hours of kid-free conversation on the other. The habit was a comforting one.
So after breakfast we arranged our 13-inch computer on the coffee table at an approximate distance from the sofa to aid our youngest in the never-ending quest to keep hands off, please, otherwise you’re going in your crib. The kids immediately lined up on the couch, stair-step bedheads in bright pajamas, squealing about Little Bear and Puffin Rock and the Gruffalo and which one was their favowite. Once they’re set, Mommy heads out to pick up some groceries, and Daddy is in the kitchen having his Daddy juice (coffee) and reading, so if you have trouble with anything please figure it out on your own.
The morning goes as planned for a half-hour or so. I receive regular reports of the doings of Little Bear and friends. I alternately bury my nose in my mug and my book, enjoying both all the more because I’m alone enjoying them, and the sun sends beams through the window.
Then, things break.
I hear a call of distress from the living room, not the usual screech of displeasure over a toy but one of actual heartbreak – from, of the three, my oldest daughter. I extricate myself from the plot line and run to the next room, expecting… I don’t know what, blood or broken glass or something. Nadia is standing up, near tears, wringing her hands. Percy is playing with his cars on the floor, and Kai is studiously picking his nose. I relax at the absence of gore (human or computer variety) and take a seat near her to investigate.
“Daddy!”
I ask what the problem is. She is really upset about this.
“I pulled Percy away from the computer! I hurt him. Mommy told me not to do that.” The tears brim over and spill down her cheeks, and she lets it all out. Percy, placid and fully engaged in Jeep noises, is obviously not damaged by his interaction with his sister. Nadia, however, obviously is.
I’ve seen many a cry in my time as a parent, but this is a new variety for me somehow. Most of the time, our children cry because there is injustice – they didn’t get something they think they deserve, or their sibling took their toy, or they’re tired and can’t process any other way. When sin has occurred, to this point, crying meant fear of discipline. Now, it means something different – a deep grief over what she did, a realization of shame – a response that is right and good when we have broken something, as we so often do.
From early parenting days I’ve struggled with the concept of discipline. It didn’t matter too much when the kids were tiny – in some sense, the routines we developed were a discipline in and of themselves. The selfish hearts we so readily perceive now were, at that point, hard to distinguish from pure hangry. What a blessing that these complex creatures come out, usually, with straightforward needs! So we developed routines and schedules and feeding times and tried to be flexible with things as best we could.
I don’t really remember when everything changed, but that might be because I don’t remember much of anything from that sleep-deprived epoch (another grace, to be sure). But one day I woke up and my kid suddenly had a sin nature. And wow, was it a doozy. We learned by osmosis or desperation to identify a rage cry versus a hunger cry. We learned that a quick flick to a hand reaching for a stovetop, followed by a serious “no, hot!” would embed the truth deeply into their psyche – that actions have consequences – without having to rush them to the hospital for second-degree burns. We learned how to clearly outline why they needed to obey, and then seconds later watched them do the exact thing we told them not to do. The first couple of times, they were always watching us carefully to see how we would respond. We responded in ways they didn’t like very much, so they learned truths about authority.
We did not do it well, or consistently, or perfectly by any stretch of the imagination. We still don’t. But our kids know right from wrong, they know what is kind and what is not, and they stop before they enter the street because we shout “NO,” and not because they see the truck barreling down the road. I have hopes that they might be contributing members of society.
A wise friend of mine (parent of four) once told me that discipline got easier when they realized it wasn’t about results. Discipline is about discipline. We cannot hope to change our children’s hearts, and thinking we can do so through discipline is ludicrous. Rather, we can use it as a tool to show them how the world works, to speak truth into their lives. We can show them that we too, require discipline from our Father – that we are all under the same rules, and that we still mess up.
Our kid’s responses now are largely related to cause and effect – the gift of discipline. My little miscreants know that discipline happens when they do something wrong, so they don’t do something wrong to avoid discipline. Or they try to hide what they did with clumsy misdirection. Nadia has become a pro at telling the non-incriminating part of the truth. Kai, though, physically cannot tell a lie. He will hem and haw for a good two or three minutes before changing the subject to train tracks or cookies.
It’s apparent that sin reigns in our children, as it has so often in us, as endearing as its host’s chubby-cheeked attempts to disguise it are. But today Nadia can’t disguise the brokenness, and my heart goes out to her, breaking as it goes.
I wrap her in my arms and let her sob a little bit, soothing as best I can. I ask if she said sorry to Percy, and she reaches for his hand to do so. Percy, the inscrutable monk, looks up at her for a moment with a lordly expression, for all the world appearing to grant her the boon of his forgiveness. He then returns to his trucks.
But Nadia is still in extreme distress, stumbling through sobs to communicate, over and over, that Mommy told her not to push him. When I suggest she confess to Mommy, and tell her we won’t punish her this time, she is vehement in her opposition. She doesn’t want to tell Mommy (regardless of punishment) and she clings to me, and I collect more tears. I’m struck suddenly how real this is to her. This isn’t something that can be cleansed by a quick confession. She is really grieved about what she’s done.
How can we even know the difference sometimes?
For years after I first realized that I needed salvation, I could not understand why certain besetting sins were still clinging to me. If I was indeed changed, why weren’t these sins – that I cognitively knew were wrong and could be overcome – why weren’t they easier to conquer? I struggled through years of fighting to be pure, of pursuing what I thought was holiness, and continually failing, and my sin was still fastened to me like a leech, and my shame grew and grew. I began to think that I was never going to be free of myself, or worse, that I wasn’t actually saved. I grew more and more ashamed, until finally, I broke.
That breaking was the moment that I realized that my sin wasn’t just an obstacle to overcome on my way to perfection. It was something that separated me from my Father. It was something that profoundly broke a relationship that I cared about more deeply than any other. When I turned away from focusing on my sin and looked to Jesus from a place of real grief and total dependence, the hold that my sin had on me loosened, if by degrees. Over time, as I continued to fall and allowed myself to be broken, and learned what it meant to seek His face, the hold loosened more and more. Suddenly, I started to experience days of freedom – more than I’d ever experienced, and a waning desire for my sin.
This was not something I did. This was Someone who broke my will to be sinless, and instead gave me His Son to make me so.
And this is the one thing I can never actually give my child.
Nadia knows the story, cognitively – how God sent His Son to die for her sins, so that she could be a daughter of God and live forever with Him. But the true gift of that bracing, sunny morning was a gift I cannot give, a gift that cannot be manufactured by any amount of discipline or “good parenting” – the gift of a heart that broke a little because she knew, somehow, that she had broken His. I can learn from this, certainly, how to hate sin, how to love my children better. But I cannot bestow the illumination that heals. I cannot speak the Word that saves.
We rocked as she wept out all the tears she could, and fresh batches swam to the surface whenever she remembered the confession ahead. When Mommy returned from shopping, they went alone into Nadia’s room and talked quietly for a short while and cuddled long after, healing the heart-wound with hearing ears and hugs. I occupied the boys. I built continuous train tracks around the living room and they knocked them over and I built them again, all the while breaking up quarrels and reminding them to be kind. We gave Nadia and Mommy privacy while we built our little loops.
We sat there on the worn brown carpet of our living room, with the sun’s warmth outside revealing worn brown grass hidden below mid-winter snows, with the fresh air flowing in and around us. I knew there in that moment that it was good to tell my children the truth: they are loved beyond belief, and they have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and Jesus has made a way for them to be saved.
In the same moment, I was eternally grateful that I was incapable of saving my kids, and that my Gracious Parent was working even now – in secret, in a little heart in the next room.