Another example of how parenting teaches me about God

Parenting teaches me so much about God as father. I was reminded about how God deals with his children once again this week while putting away laundry.

I called JJ to come hang up his shirts and told him that if he came right away, I would help him do it. (Hanging shirts is a new skill that JJ and I are working really hard on. Having a four-year-old that hangs up all her clothes helps keep me motivated that eventually we will be successful!)

JJ decided not to come right away, preferring to play with his lego instead.

When I told him that he'd have to hang up his shirts by himself, he came into his room and started crying that it was too hard. He sat there for a few minutes, trying to figure it out, but very frustrated, tears streaming down his cheeks. Suffering... from a two-year-old's perspective.

I told him that I just wanted him to try and though I kept feeling the urge to bail him out and help him through it, I had a hope that he'd get it himself, so I let him suffer through the frustration...

...until suddenly... he'd done it!

He ran out to daddy to show him what he'd done and then did the other shirt himself.
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It's no secret that my family has been going through our share of suffering, relating to my mom's health, over the past nearly three months.

In short synopsis, mom had an urgent achilles tendon repair done, which reopened 5 weeks later. To repair that, she had to have a free-flap transfer to cover the open wound. In her case, the free-flap transfer meant they took a chunk of tissue from her upper arm and reattached it to her ankle. That was followed by a readmission for severe dehydration and pain, and just recently, another readmission for a severe lung infection. All this in the context of the fact that she has advanced leukemia.

Her ability to fight infection is very compromised, so just when she starts to feel a little better and like she might be able to start re-learning how to walk on her leg, she gets another infection. It is very defeating.

It's been a long three months, with lots of crisis moments, prioritizing, reprioritizing, crying together, talking about the future, considering our fears... you name it. Suffering... from this family's perspective.

Now, suffering doesn't necessarily come from God. In JJ's case, his suffering was related to his choice to continue playing instead of coming when I asked him to come. Suffering isn't necessarily always related to our choices though. There is a lot of suffering that we just aren't going to be able to understand on this side of eternity. Mom's suffering is one of those cases.

Lots of us question why God allows suffering. I can't explain it all. But I do know that God uses every hardship in our lives to shape us and teach us. And, just like I knew better than to bail JJ out of his momentary suffering, God knows better than to bail us out of ours.

The thing is, God is a perfect parent. Sometimes, I get irritated waiting for my kids to attain a skill, or I fail and bail them out of doing something hard, but God doesn't parent like that.

I love one of the conversations in the book, "The Shack". The main character is talking about failure, and asking if God gets frustrated with us when we fail. And God responds that, since he is omniscient, he knows that it's going to take us 48 times before we get it right. So after the first failure, He's so excited because He knows it's only 47 more times before we succeed!

God doesn't let any suffering or hardship go to waste. (Although, some of it is definitely going to MY waist, if you know what I mean!) He lets us work through the suffering, though he remains with us and coaches us through it, so that we will come out the end of it having learned something...

... like how to balance life's demands when mom is sick...

... and like how to hang our shirts up on a hanger.