ONE RED PILOT

God gave me an eye opener tonight. Let me set the scene…

We had our neighbor friends over for dinner. They have 2 girls they same age as our 2 kids. We were sitting downstairs after dinner talking and the kids were in the playroom upstairs. We heard some anger type cries coming from the neighbor kids and their mom went up to check. She came back downstairs and said that we may want to have a chat with our son because he was saying some mean things. Carrie went upstairs and promptly came back down, told me what happened, and said I needed to handle it…here’s where it begins.

The second I grabbed my sons hand to take him into his room, he began to cry. I sat him on his bed and asked him to tell me what he did (even though I already knew), he just looked at me and cried. I said to him, “it’s very important to me that YOU tell me what happened”, he shook his head no. I asked him why he would not tell me and he replied, “I’m scared.” This was nothing new because that just meant he thought he was getting a spanking…yes, we spank in our home. The thing was, I already knew what he did. I knew what the punishment for him was going to be and it wasn’t a spanking. It was just very important that he fessed up to what had happened.

I asked him again to tell me what happened and asked him why he was scared…he cried harder. The cry though wasn’t one of fear at this point. It became a familiar cry, one I personally was familiar with. It was a cry of shame. I asked the question one more time and this time he answered. “I don’t want to tell you because what I did was bad.” This shook me inside. You see, he knew what he did was bad and it was messing with him. He thought if I knew he did something bad he’d fall short in my eyes. In his mind he wants to be a little boy that his Dad can be proud of and if I knew what he did maybe I wouldn’t be. I stood up and sat next to him, by this time I was borderline crying myself. I brought him in close to me and said “buddy, i love you. there is nothing you can say or do that would make me love you more or less. Exactly who you are makes me the proudest Dad in the world, nothing will ever change that.” In that moment, he stopped crying, he calmed himself, I asked him one more time to tell me what he did, and he told me.

What I took away from all of that is this. How many times has God come to us already knowing where we fall short and just wanted us to talk to Him?! Tell Him where we’ve fallen short. We begin to cry a shameful cry not wanting to reveal our ugly side trying to be these perfect Christians, ones that God can be proud of. He then leans in close, grabs us and says, “I love you just the way you are. I think you are perfect in every way, there is nothing you can say or do that would make me not want you……just talk to me.” In that moment everything seems to disappear and we have an open honest conversation with our Dad.

when’s the last time you had an open honest conversation with your heavenly Dad?

I love being a parent,

nate