Raising a World Changer

I've shared with many of my friends (and maybe even on this blog) that I happen to be raising a strong-willed child.  This is no easy task and as one who is more on the compliant and easy-going side, it's particularly exhausting.  I just can't figure out why he won't simply listen and obey.  It's so much easier!!  But as Dean has said to me before, he definitely has a "world changing personality".  The trick is to harness that and keep him from getting in too much trouble in the meantime.

As Tommy has gotten older, it has become more challenging to shape that spirit, but it's also gotten slightly easier because he is able to communicate so much better.  We've had our good days and we've certainly had our bad days, but here are a few things I've learned along the way

1. Prayer: I cannot say enough about the importance of this. I am constantly praying for my family, and when it comes to my children, I'm praying for huge amounts of wisdom on my end and sometimes I'm just praying "Lord, please don't let me just lose it right now!" And I notice the calmness that comes over me as I pray in the midst of a scuffle.

2. Never Waste an Opportunity: Tommy is a pastor's kid, so hopefully he's at least been exposed to the Gospel.  That should be said of every child growing up in a Christian home.  We've read his children's Bible together.  We talk about the truths of forgiveness and repentance and mercy and grace. The key is Deut. 6:7 "Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up." We try to turn everything into an discussion on a biblical truth (without overdoing it and making him hate the Bible because it says he can't have a cookie because his body is God's temple and God doesn't want too many chocolate chips in his temple).

The other day I had a couple conversations with Tommy that completely blew me away. We had just had a very large "battle of the wills", if you will, and Tommy had been sent to his room for "freaking out" (one of our house rules is "no freak-outs"). He came out after I told him he could and he told me through his just-dried tears "Mommy, when I was in my room just now, I prayed for God to let Jesus die on the cross for my sins."

Well that about made me cry and so we talked about the fact that Jesus only needed to die once, even for the sin that he just did, even for the sins he'd do the next day and next year and everything. I was thrilled with that conversation, thinking we'd just turned a big corner.  Then he came home from school and basically spent the entire afternoon in his room (as a punishment, not because he was being reclusive).  I was a little disappointed, to say the least. But the next morning he came out and asked me, "Mommy, why do I keep freaking out like this?" and I said, "Honey, I have no idea." His response was "Well, I feel like I have God on one side and Satan on the other side and it's going Satan, God, Satan God, Satan, God", as he was doing a tug-of-war motion.  I explained that he was exactly right and in the Bible it talks about a spiritual battle (he loves battles) and how Satan's the bad guy and God's the good guy and God always wins in the end, but it's important to not listen to the bad guy and let him win the little battles. He seemed to get that and it's opened the door to more conversations like that.

This is an awesome part of parenting, but I admit to know I'll do this all over again with Ty is a bit of an exhausting thought. But at the same time, I can't wait.  There's nothing like it.