Encourage THINKING–Not the Thought!

“Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.”

― Margaret Mead

 

We think that when our children are small we want to encourage them TO THINK.

 

We delight in all their funny thoughts and repeat every witty comment every said over a meal or to a grandparent!

 

When Scott said to my sister, “Why doesn’t God just kill the devil? Oh I know! He has that pitch forky thing!” I thought we would double over laughing. The theology did not worry us! The four-year-old was  THINKING!!!!

 

 

They make home runs and we CHEER! They strike out and we say, “You’ll get ‘em next time!” Most of all, when they are young we are the BIGGEST cheerleaders. They make a 100 on their spelling test and we see visions of ‘writer’ in their future. They flunk a math test and we cross ‘engineer’ off the list of possible occupations and say, “The world has too many engineers anyway!”

We know they are going to be successful! 

 

 

When our darlings become adults we remember all those times they were the STAR OF THE SHOW!

 

From our perspective, they were destined for nothing but greatness.  Because of our perspective, we become disappointed when they don’t ‘reach their potential’ because of a thought they have.

 

 We try (sometimes not so gently) to get them ‘back on course!’ We KNOW they are destined for greatness and they just need a little push.

They just need a ‘tweak in their thinking…” OR IS IT THEIR THOUGHTS? 

Soon the push becomes a shove…and the shove… becomes our own frustration.

 Why do we push them? Because we still see the adorable child whom we wanted to succeed. We see the ballerina that just needed encouragement. We see the scholar that only needed someone to believe in him.

The truth is: our kids MAY NOT DEFINE SUCCESS THE WAY WE DO.  They may actually have different THOUGHTS than we do. 

They may not desire a corner office with a window; they may not even desire a corner office OR  any office AT ALL.

We wanted them to THINK and we encouraged their thinking! Now that they are thinking on their own, sometimes we are nervous, upset and even angry that the end of their thoughts did not lead them to the same destination our thoughts led us.

 

I am not romanticizing that we go back to believing in pixy dust and that the moon is made of green cheese, like when they were four…what I am proposing is that some of the basic ways to find truth might come back with different thoughts:

“We should learn to take care of the widows and orphans.”

        Hey Mom! We are adopting! Sure we can still conceive our own kids but we want to adopt.

 

“We should spread Jesus’ love to the ends of the earth.”

        Hey Dad! Last week we finally decided that our church’s missionaries need help! So we are taking the kids and going to _____ (fill in the blank with anywhere more than 200 miles away and preferably without clean water)

 

“We should put others above ourselves.”

    Yea, we know this is going to be hard on our family, but we prayed and we really feel like we need to take in this woman and her three kids while she gets on her feet.

 

 “As much as we can, we should owe no one anything except love.”

    We sold our second car. We are paying off all our debt. We can do this.

  

“As far as it lies within you, live peaceable with all men.”

    I am not gonna rock the boat on his lifestyle. Live and let live is what you taught me.
 

“He who doesn't take care of his family is worse than an infidel.”

    I am quitting my job. I can never be at home when he is home and it is just not worth it.
 

 

Encouraging thinking— not the specific thoughts:

JUST another super-power to parenting adult children. 

Lesson One: FAIL EPICLY

Psalm 57:7

7 My heart is steadfast, O God,

    my heart is steadfast!

I will sing and make melody!

A year ago  I was confident I heard the Lord tell me to sell my company and take a new adventure. The new adventure was the one I am on now: writing, blogging, speaking about parenting adult children. 

But, the sale of the company did not go. I regrouped and turned to sell shares in the company to generate the income I needed to be able to ‘step aside’ from my salary and begin this project.

Fail.

When that did not work either I stalled in this writing venture.

Even though all my kids were finished with school, I found it impossible to just close the doors and turn away.  There has still been no financial provision for my new venture but I taking the steps to pursue this calling of dialoguing with others about parenting our adult children.

Hebrews 10:35

35 Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward.

A GOOD JOB TO FOLLOW YOU

Recently, a gal visited our church who had been called to be a midwife to Haiti. having seen the high  mortality rate of the mothers who had just given birth.  She realized that these mothers were leaving orphans because of very treatable infections and lack of knowledge.  According to her testimony, she told the Lord, “Lord, if you will just give me a good paying job while I am here in the states so I can pay these school bills, then I will go back to Haiti and deliver babies and keep mothers alive.”

Our pastor laughingly said, “Never tell God if He gives you a good paying job then you will follow. Go ahead and tell Him you will do it for free and depend on Him, because that is what has to happen every time, right?”

Right.

Although the world may see my company not selling as an epic fail I am choosing to see it as a great provision to increase my faith in the calling of this project.

I am not a great writer. I am not a great organizer or time manager. Every word will depend on the Lord. Every edit will depend on Him. The provision for the project will come from Him.

Jehoshephat knew that dependence when the men of Ammon and Moab and Mount Seir threatened to come and invade the Israelites.  King Jehoshaphat cried out the prayer I have prayed so many times:

 “We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.” 2 Chronicles 20:12

So why in the world would I beign with FAILURE as the first lesson in learning to parent adult children? Becuase we will fail them. We have failed them…

Why is FAILURE the first lesson in learning to parent our children who are now adults? Because we will fail them.  We have failed them.

We failed them as infants! Remember how SHOCKED we were that the nursing staff could be so incompetent as to let us leave the hospital with that baby that we knew NOTHING about raising?

And toddlers — do not get me started! I can never go back to that SuperCenter, since my toddler threw a fit because he wanted to leave, and then promptly threw up in the basket! News flash– we will continue to fail them.

Fail. Fail. Fail. 

But just as we continued to love and nurture them through the infant and toddler fails, we carry on in their adult lives. We cannot save our adult children from making mistakes (although most do not still throw fits in the middle of Target any more) or from unhappy days, broken hearts, rejection from friends (or siblings), lost jobs, or natural disaster. But we can show them where to look for comfort…

Philippians 1:6

And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

My almost-joke prayer to the Lord is always, “Lord, you got me into this parenting thing. It was your idea not mine. You better do something here!”

Smiling, He does. He never fails.