A few weeks ago I ran errands for my wife. I was in our local grocery store picking up a few essentials: 17 jars of peanut butter (we have six children), 53 bags of potato chips, and several mega-packs of diapers (two of the six children are still in diapers). In other words, an average every-other-day trip to the grocery store for the Hale family.
While on the cereal aisle I noticed a mother dealing with two unruly children. In actuality, she was the one being dealt with. The children were working her over pretty good as they fussed, fought, and carried on about something or other. I came in late so I was unclear as to what set off the uprising. The mother attempted to appease the dissidents by offering to buy them the cereal with a “free prize inside.” As I listened to her appeasement attempts I thought, “Good woman, please. Put down this uprising already. Don’t negotiate with the terrorists.” With her offer of détente clearly rejected by her offspring the mother succumbed to exasperation and exclaimed, “You kids are going to be the death of me.”
That last exclamation struck me as odd and stayed in my mind throughout the rest of my shopping trip. “Now there is a phrase you don’t hear much anymore,” was my initial thought. My next thought was (I confess) rather judgmental. “Two kids are going to be ‘the death of you?’ Two kids?!? My tenacious wife frequently takes all six of our children to the store without incident. And she has been known to add a couple of neighbor kids to the trip just because she can.” Then Philo of Alexandria’s famous quote about being kind because everyone we meet is fighting a great battle floated into my head and I confessed my judgmental attitude to the Lord. Clearly this mother was, and had been, fighting great battles for some time and was being routed quite handily in the latest skirmish.
Then I personalized her exclamation and thought about it in my own life. “You kids are going to be the death of me.” There is much truth in this rather antiquated saying. My children have been the death of me. Or to put a finer point on things, they have been the death and resurrection of me. This is exactly the way God designed my children to operate in my life. I love sleeping in a little too much and so God kills that in me by giving me infants that won’t sleep and toddlers that awake periodically with nightmares or needing to go potty. But He doesn’t leave me there. I am resurrected as someone who learns that my time — even my sleeping time — no longer belongs to me but I must share it with others so that they might have what they need. I have a love for eating out at restaurants and so God kills that in me by giving me six children so that eating out is almost always a financial impossibility. Then I am resurrected as someone who falls in love with cooking, eating at home, and looking forward to a royal feast created with two pounds of pinto beans, Jiffy cornbread mix, and a slow cooker.
In Proverbs 27:17 we hear, “Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.” It is easy to read a verse like that and imagine two equally competent adults sitting around a table vigorously discussing theological points. One adult expresses a view, the other adult offers a slightly different viewpoint, and in the back and forth iron sharpens iron. Having been a parent for over 15 years I can honestly say that I never really knew what that verse meant until my wife and I had children. Children sharpen us far more — and far more often — than any of our relationships with our adult friends. Got anger issues? Rest assured, a screaming toddler or a tired 6-year-old will force those issues to the surface in a way no Bible study ever could. Got problems controlling your tongue? Try controlling it when your teenager is experimenting with the finer nuances of the rhetoric stage and you forgot to change out of your cranky pants.
Pastor Douglas Wilson pointed out in a sermon once that we pray to God for joy and God answers our prayer by enrolling us in “school of hard knocks classes” that eventually produce deep, meaningful joy, provided we stick with the classes long enough to see graduation day. But we kick against the goads of all of that and reply, “God, I prayed to you and asked for joy but my life has been a dumpster fire ever since. I didn’t mean to sign up for ‘hard knocks classes.’ I wanted to skip right to the ‘joy diploma’ at the end.” We want the diploma but we want it without the blood, sweat, and tears of going to class, learning the material, pulling all-nighters cramming for finals, and mastering skills over years of study. Eugene Peterson calls this a long obedience in the same direction and that is most certainly the way of God as He sanctifies His people.
Just like Jesus in Hebrews 12:2, the only way to the joy set before us is through enduring the cross. But the cross is never the final word in the matter. After death, resurrection. After the removal of the dross, gold. After iron has sharpened iron, a razor-sharp blade. For Christian parents, our children are the iron that God uses to run us through and bring about “the death of me.” They are the most effective means in God’s arsenal to bring about the death of all that is selfish, petty, ugly, and wicked in our lives. What God kills He also resurrects to love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. The Christian parent can confidently submit to the “death of me” because he or she realizes that what awaits on the other side of that death is not “more death,” but rather resurrection life, a better life, a fuller life, and hopeful life. We will be better for it and so will our children.
—-
Derek Hale has lived all of his life in Wichita, Kansas and isn’t a bit ashamed about that fact. He and his wife Nicole have only six children – four daughters and two young sons of thunder. Derek is a ruling elder, chief musician, and performs pastoral duties at Trinity Covenant Church (CREC). Derek works for NetApp and enjoys reading, computers, exercising, craft beer, and playing and listening to music. But not all at the same time. He blogs occasionally at derekthehale.wordpress.com/.<>
