If your sense of worth is built upon how people regard you as a parent in light of your adult child’s behavior, what happens? You crumble under their judgment or lash out in defense. But if God is our glory and the lifter of our head, we have a greater capacity for patience with people who simply don’t know what they’re talking about.
Exhibit C: You Can Decide When You’ve Done Enough
Some of us continue to prop up and to rescue our children longer than we should. That’s because, too often, our glory is in being able to present the world with a well-adjusted young adult who makes godly and wise decisions. Since that hasn’t happened yet, we continue to make heavy investments of our emotional and financial resources in hopes that we can still achieve that glory.
Ultimately, though, this is healthy neither for the parent nor for the adult child. By finding sufficient glory in God’s gracious relationship with us, we are in a better position to judge when we’ve provided enough help, advice and intervention.
Exhibit D: You Can Take Pressure Off the Other Children
If we believe that the actions of one child invalidate our success as parents, we may be tempted to depend on the success of our other children to prove to the world that we weren’t such failures after all. These children begin to feel the pressure to report visible achievements and, in the process, to hide their own problems.
On the other hand, when our worth no longer collapses amid the challenges one child brings, we’ll better focus on each of the other children as individuals with their own hopes, fears, mistakes and growth. They no longer feel themselves as objects we use to validate our parenting.
Let God Reset Your Story
As King David fled Jerusalem ahead of his son’s rebellion, he could no longer point to his piety, his power or his parenting as the source of his worth. “But you, O Lord, are my glory,” he confessed.
It’s time we parents find our worth in the majesty of our God and not the lives of our children.
