It has been well documented that I am an expert grudge holder. I've made a conscious effort to let go.. of all of it, but it's a continual process. I'm never more reminded than when the roles are reversed… and someone is holding a grudge against me. Unfortunately, it turns out I'm not perfect and occasionally I mess up. I can't help but be reminded of my own stubbornness and bitterness when I suddenly want graciousness and forgiveness from someone else.
With children there are hundreds of discipline techniques to teach them to not mess up again. Timeouts, spanking, grounding… take your pick, but we learn from an early age that when you mess up there are negative consequences and the disciplinarians hope the consequences convince you whatever you did wrong wasn't worth the consequences. Hopefully, as we get older, we mature and need less of the negative consequences. In theory, we know the difference between right and wrong and I would like to believe that while we still often suffer consequences, we don't need them to know we messed up.
When people mess up, sometimes I get mad and/or hurt and I want to make sure it doesn't happen again. If you wrong me, I'm usually afraid to let you off the hook because I'm not sure I trust that you won't do it again. The "easy" answer is for me to cut people out… one strike and you're out. I want to be able to say I forgive you, but I don't condone what you did. I want to show grace without being weak. I want to love without being naive.
Jen Hatmaker wrote a pretty sweet blog about grace and failure this week. She told a story about showing grace toward her son when he messed up. There's a part of me that cringed… wondering if they did enough. Did he learn his lesson? Will he just make the same mistake next time?
And yet she says…
"Mamas, we discipline to teach our children responsibility, honesty, character, and godliness – all important. But we forgive to teach them mercy, kindness, gentleness, and grace – all equally important. We communicate to them, 'This is not a perfect family; it’s a human family held together by love, compassion, and a lot of duct tape.' We must get vulnerable and honest with our children, sharing our mistakes and identifying with them way down deep in their guilt, teaching them that we are safe and they need never hide from us.
Your kids will fail in sometimes epic, embarrassing ways. Like you did. Like I did. This doesn’t mean you’ve done a sorry job as a parent or your child is destined for the penitentiary. It just means God has given you yet another chance to act justly, to love mercy, and to learn to walk humbly with Him. If motherhood hasn’t taught us to die to self, then we haven’t been paying a lick of attention."
I am confident this doesn't work with every kid or every circumstance. But it is refreshing to see grace in action. I want to have another chance to forgive to teach mercy, kindness, gentleness, and grace.
