Learning the Hard Way

Why didn’t anybody tell me this parenthood thing was gonna be hard? Oh that’s right, everyone did.

It’s been a rough week. On a scale of 1 - Rough, we’ve probably been landing somewhere around an 8.5. The adoption’s had some annoying (seemingly very avoidable) set-backs, we’re moving out of our house, but the house we were moving into fell through the night before our move (due to the even rougher week my pastor’s family’s been through), and on top of all that Ange and I have been struggling.

I thought maybe if I shared the lessons I’m learning with you here God will believe that I really have learned them and not feel the need to keep teaching them to me.

Love is not a feeling it’s a verb. We’ve all heard this, and I think I’ve definitely practiced it before, but when someone’s being awful to you it’s hard to even like them, let alone love them. However, if love’s not a feeling, how you’re being treated shouldn’t have anything to do with how you act.

If you can’t change the circumstances change your attitude. (My lawyer said this to me after he’d goofed up big time and I was a bit disappointed, I nearly answered “but I can change my lawyer.”) Later I realized I can’t change how much homework Ange has, and I can’t control her attitude, but I can control mine.

Motivation is more effective (and more fun) than punishment. Frankly, I don’t like bribing the child much more than punishing her, since both are works-based and I lean a bit heavy on the grace side of the Old vs. New Covenant spectrum. But I’m coming to realize that as long as my love isn’t earned or lost by her behavior, other prizes might not be totally out of the question. She’s already responding really well to the chart I made with silly pictures of her, where we talk about how she did each day waking up, doing her homework, going to bed, etc.

Love like Jesus showed does not expect anything in return. I’ve, honestly, always been horrible with doing things anonymously. I rationalize that I just want to know if it was well received so I’ll know whether to do things like that again or not waste the time, effort, and money, but really I probably just want to be appreciated. Since I never learned that one well, God’s giving me lots and lots of practice serving this little one who can’t return the half of it and often doesn’t even notice. What an awesome idea to give for the sake of giving instead of receiving.

Finally, the good times are totally worth the rough ones. And learning to be more selfless was part of the reason for this whole crazy adoption idea in the first place, so it’d be ridiculous to reject that benefit now.