I will always remember one particular moment as one of my children approached GCSEs. My child was in tears, screaming at me: ‘I am going to fail all of them.’ This was not the first time this had happened.
Previously, I had said things like ‘You won’t’ and ‘You can only do your best.’ No previous answer had improved the situation. The panic and the fear continued. This time, I decided that I had a better, Christian answer to give. ‘And that would be alright.’
I recently stayed with a Christian family. One child is still living at home, their other two are living independently. Their family’s story includes sibling anger, late diagnosis neurodiversity, multiple school moves, and a particularly painful season with one of their teenagers.
It also includes amazing family memories, others in need who have been brought into their home, their enduring trust in Christ, and supportive churches. These are experienced and godly parents!
I remember hearing my parents talking about me in the next room: ‘He must be going through puberty.’ I felt anger. I felt judged. I felt misunderstood. I must have been going through puberty! Am I the only one who still feels a little awkward saying the word out loud?
It wasn’t until my thirties when I had my penny-drop moment about puberty. A paediatric doctor was on our podcast for parents helping us to think about how we talk to children about their bodies as they grow up. Without any fanfare she said: ‘Puberty is God’s way of preparing our bodies for adulthood.’ I apologise if I am the only one who missed this obvious perspective.
I led a table at a seminar for parents on tackling screen time, organised by my local secondary school.
For the first discussion, each of the ten parents at my table told a story to illustrate why we were there. We heard about ruined holidays, sexting, repeated arguments ripping apart families, and young people who wander around their home fixed to their hand-held games console. There was a shared sense of despair. Perhaps my group wasn’t representative, but there were eight other tables. I do not see much difference in stories from church families. It is always one of the top questions we are asked in parenting seminars. I suspect in church we might just be less honest about the size of the problem.
For one of my children, there was a three-year period straddling primary and secondary school when bedtime often meant tears.
There were long conversations in which they begged not to go to school. While much of the time was spent clarifying the law on attendance, the problem was not legal, but all about friendship. The words that kept on putting a dagger through my heart were: ‘I have no friends.’ I learnt that naming children in the class like a desperate form of bingo did not help. Nor did organising playdates. Nor did conversations with the teacher, or other parents, or even those other children themselves.
I have a friend who grew up in Nigeria. As a child, his family would pray before going on a journey across their city.
They never felt sure that they would arrive safely or in good time. Dependence on the Lord was the air he breathed. His parents led him every day in looking to the Lord to provide.
Uncomfortable shiny shoes. A new pencil case full of stationery treats. A staged photo on the doorstep, complete with fixed grin and new uniform. This is the evidence of a new school year.
For many families, there is far more happening beneath the social media surface.
Lucy was chopping vegetables in the kitchen when her nine-year-old daughter, Holly, said, ‘Mum, I think I might be bisexual.’
Lucy remembers putting down the knife, quietly taking a deep breath and choosing to ignore all the little voices that were screaming in her head. All good so far.
There is an incredibly powerful song in the film The Greatest Showman called ‘This is me’.
It is sung by the cast of Barnum’s Circus. Audiences come to see them because each is in some way a ‘freak’, but together they are a tight-knit family. Against the finger-pointing and the pity, they sing together ‘This is me’. Their lives have been defined by rejection because of what they look like, whether it be their extreme height (or lack of it), their impressive beard (on a woman), their birthmarks, or their tattoos.
When my child is crying, my prayers are different.
They have a problem and I can’t fix it. I take it to our Father in heaven. He loves my child more than I do. He has all power at His disposal. The words I pray feel like they really matter.
Multiple surveys consistently find that about three-quarters of the UK church came to faith before they left secondary school.
This is consistent with the Bible story (Prov. 22:6, Ps.78:1-6). Given the disproportionate influence of those first two decades of life, it is vital that we understand the key effective steps in ensuring we hand our faith onto the next generation.
It might be at school drop-off. The sweet little boy, with a mop of wild hair, runs excitedly along. His legs are moving too fast for his body, then comes that awful moment when you know he’s about to fall.
The sound of knees hitting concrete. The pause. Then the scream. Every parent steps towards him, hands out, gasps of sympathy, longing to fix it, wipe the tears and take away the pain.
There is a corporate mantra, ‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’.
It warns against trumpeting the five-year plan, putting up workplace posters and rolling out a training scheme for every employee without changing the culture of the team. No amount of resolutions, colourful charts and snappy sentences will bring about change unless accompanied by shared convictions and habits.
Jake is Sarah’s eldest child. I saw Sarah on the first Sunday after she dropped Jake off at university for his first term.
She said to me: ‘It’s pathetic. I want to get into the car and drive four hours to take him to church! When I left him, I had plastered his desk with Post-it notes telling him the address of his local good church. It’s so close to him. He needs to walk out of his door, turn right, go 300 yards and walk through that door. It couldn’t be easier. But it’s up to him now.’
In the middle of the bright lights and confused tourists in Piccadilly Circus is the statue of Eros. Except it isn’t.
Everyone thinks it’s Eros, but that’s because they’ve got the wrong brother. They look very similar. Even their mum probably got them mixed up. The statue is Anteros, the brother of Eros, the Greek god of love and sex. Anteros is the Greek god of selfless love. This matters. The statue of Anteros was paid for by the people of London to remember the life of the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, who died in 1885. Please don’t give up on me. I know I have moved from obscure Greek mythology to obscure dead aristocracy, but I am going somewhere wonderful.
Evangelism always takes courage. The awkwardness can be real. The goal is worth it: whole families turning to Christ. Those families are best reached by Christian families.
I was in the first month of working for a church. I was young. I had no children. I was sat in the home of a couple from church (who I had only just met). That week their five-year-old had told them a story from school. She had got together with her best friend from church and had cornered a boy from their class. With their prey unable to leave, she told him: ‘You’re going to hell if you don’t become a Christian.’
In Uganda, for Christmas, most city dwellers head to the countryside where their families live.
Traffic jams are worse than normal. Cars are loaded up with treats that can’t be bought in the rural areas. Once they arrive, families sit together and tell their stories; they laugh, they eat and they celebrate. We heard about a Ugandan Christmas on our recent Faith in Parents podcast, ‘Christmas elsewhere’. What struck me most was that families reflect on the past year and they plan the next year – together. There is celebration in the discussion. They are not remembering their country’s progress or their team’s season or their school’s achievements. It is a celebration of their own special family. Theirs is a unique conversation.
Have you seen the recent news footage of flash floods sweeping through towns or villages?
Twice in the last month flooding in our little corner of suburbia has made it into the national news. The crisis response is clear. The Fire Brigade is called to pump out. The strongest and fittest carry the vulnerable to safety through the water. And then the cameras return two weeks later. As the water ebbs away, so does the jovial wartime spirit. Instead, each house fills a skip with stinking carpets, broken kitchen appliances and ruined personal treasures. The clear up is usually more painful and longer lasting than the crisis.
What is a wet dream? I was asked this by my 11-year-old son this week.
He was looking at the syllabus that had been sent home by his year six teacher. I was into my second sentence when he interrupted me: ‘Can I have the short version?’ I was encouraged by that. He has noticed that whenever we talk about issues around biology and sex, I give full answers and ask him questions. This is partly to compensate for the huge awkwardness I inevitably feel. I think I may have over-compensated!
I write books of family Bible times and I want to inspire parents to raise their children knowing Christ, but my own family Bible times are rarely inspirational.
I have a photo (not shown here) of me leading our family Bible time. I am sat in the middle of the sofa with my Bible open. Two of my children are curled over the arms of the sofa, their backs to me. Only my youngest seems engaged, and that is because my arm is clamped round his waist so he can’t escape. I use this photo because it captures our normal. Here is what I have learnt, with my own family, through all the mistakes, frustration and confusion.
My
friend, Amanda, vividly remembers
the moment it all fell apart during a family
Bible time. I’ll let her tell the story…
‘Halfway
through,
my
13-year-old
daughter lay down on the kitchen bench to
go to sleep, my 11-year-old son put his head
on the table and closed his eyes, and my
seven-year-old daughter decided it was the
moment to practise her cartwheels. It all felt
too hard, and tears started rolling down my
face. That was the moment I was tempted to
give up. Tempted to think it was all a waste
of time. It was only God’s kindness that
motivated me to keep going.’
Christmas is not cancelled. I promise. The angel Gabriel will terrify Mary, baby Jesus will be laid in a manger and the shepherds will run through Bethlehem with the good news of great joy for everyone.
Emmanuel will still be ‘God with us’ despite social distancing. In fact, ‘God with us’ will mean all the more this year. The Son of God chose to enter our lockdown, joining us in our struggles by becoming a child in an unsettled family. He gets it.
During lockdown I was told that there are usually three stages to a crisis. I see these responses in the lives of the families I know, including my own.
1. Emergency response. The first weeks of lockdown. Hard work. Getting by. Running on adrenaline. Late nights. Early mornings. The crisis feels very real. Is our family safe? Is there food on the table? Eventually, we realise that lockdown isn’t ending anytime soon.
I’m finding these days bruising. Between us, my wife and I have eight days of work to squeeze into five days each week. We are sharing the time with our children, so that one of us works in (peaceful) isolation, while the other is a combination of referee, teacher and bringer of light relief to the children.
My particular struggle is disproportionate disappointment when the children demonstrate that they are – children. That is, they are prone to accidents, likely to discourage each other and sometimes lost in bouts of frustration. In short, my children need me to parent them!
An eight-year-old boy walks through his front door in tears. His Christian mum walks in behind him. They are just back from the school run.
He runs off to his room shouting: ‘I’m never going to school again.’ He says he has no friends. He says he always plays alone. Every night he cries, begging his mum to let him stay at home, ‘just for tomorrow’.
There was a public debate between Professor Richard Dawkins, the famous atheist biologist and Professor John Lennox, the Christian mathematician.
Dawkins started by summarising his greatest problem with Christianity (with a tone of total disdain): ‘[Lennox] believes that the creator of the universe, the God who devised the laws of physics, the laws of mathematics … billions of light years of space, billions of years of time … couldn’t think of a better way to rid the world of sin than to come to this little speck of cosmic dust to have himself tortured and executed … That’s the God that John Lennox believes in.’
Sand is still in their shoes, postcards are on their way to grandparents, and suntans have not yet faded; but nerves and worry about the new school year have already started.
I know a girl; let’s call her Ella. She gets very anxious about school. Friendships are hard to navigate. She’s up in the night. She’s sometimes sick in the morning. Her Mum feels exhausted, knowing that she will peel her daughter off her leg at the school gate. Everyone feels like a failure.
I remember being asked by a mother what more she could do to encourage her 14-year-old son to stay close to Christ. Her family was already an active part of their church. She was already doing a great job opening the Bible when she could and taking him to Christ in conversations.
My first step was to encourage her. Her son was safe in God’s hands. She could rely on her Heavenly Father to show her son all love, patience and mercy. Her regular prayers for her son’s heart to always belong to the Lord were being heard. Her desire to surround him with great teaching, great role models and a great church family was bearing fruit in his life. I wanted her to know that his salvation was not a burden that she had to carry.
Amanda vividly remembers the moment
when she cried at her kitchen table in front
of her three children.
At the time, her 14-year-old daughter was
lying on the floor, her 12-year-old son had
his head in his hands and her six-year-old
girl was doing cartwheels around the room.
Why the tears? Well, all this was happening
in the middle of her family Bible time.
