Be Kind...To Yourself...Spiritual Counsel for Parents Who Feel Like They Failed

The longer I am in ministry, the more I come across parents of adult children who live with self-condemnation because they feel like they weren't the parents they longed to be. Some of them really did mess up (and I address that here). Others are definitely being too hard on themselves. My job as a pastor is to help them apply God's word to allow conviction while also offering His forgiveness and grace. This is my first attempt to do that. Can you help me finish it? There are no doubt other mitigating factors that make parenting so difficult I might not have run across. If you'd like to offer a suggestion or two for something I should add, please do so in the comments. And perhaps those of us who have adult children could encourage each other there in the comments as well.

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Amy’s husband Stuart played professional minor league baseball. Maybe that’s why she likes to use baseball analogies so often when she tells me she wishes she could have another “at bat” with her oldest son Nathan.

“I know we struck out with him when he was young. Stuart was gone half of the year, money was tight, and I wasn’t born with the ‘mom gene.’ Half the time, I honestly didn’t know what to do. We had to move so much that it was hard to build friendships and find a supportive church. The life of a professional athlete has so many mountains and valleys, which puts a lot of pressure on the marriage and the whole family. We’d drag Nathan along. I wish we could get another shot with the resources we have now and what we know now.”

There’s a place for conviction when we know we’ve failed. It is healthy to take stock of where we have fallen short as parents and to make amends with our children. In this instance, I told Amy it could be very healing for her and Stuart to apologize to Nathan and say they wish they would have done some things differently. In fact, that’s exactly what they did.  The reality they pointed out to me, however (and it was a good reminder), is that it’s not like they are now all-star parents who hit home runs every day with the way they treat Nathan now that he’s older. They still fail. They still wish they could do better. “I totally blew a phone call with him last week!” Amy lamented.

Here’s my follow-up spiritual counsel:

Be kind.

To yourself.

“Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32). Should we not treat ourselves as we are to treat others? It was Jesus who said to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, so if His servant tells us to have this attitude toward our neighbors, we’re to adopt the same attitude toward ourselves.

2 Timothy 2:24 says “the Lord’s servant must … be kind to everyone.”

Are you someone? Of course you are. This means, as God’s servant, you must be kind to yourself.