Dealing With Your Parenting “If Only”s

Question. What’s the one thing you wish about your family that feels like it would make everything better? That finally, your parenting could really sing?

What’s your “if only”?

Maybe you’re dealing with a child’s behavior or learning disorder. You could be grappling with teens making choices that double you over in pain, or a child who’s so different from you, you don’t know where to go from here. Your child might have health issues that tear you awake in the middle of the night.

Currently, I have deep desires swirling around my kids’ character. They’re good desires; great ones, even. I mulled over my “if only”s while gazing at the perfect indigoes and cotton-candy pinks of a Colorado sunset the other night.

The passage in the Bible on my lap: Luke 19, right before Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem.

Jesus is looking over the Holy City. From the way the text reads, it seems he could view the crowds amassing, ripping down palm branches, shrugging off jackets; their shouts were gathering volume. It seems the party awaiting him wasn’t a surprise one.

This is one of those moments a screenwriter might drop in for its dramatic effect, because it’s completely different from what the reader would expect.

Jesus is crying.

He’s literally weeping over the city. And his words remain curious to me: “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.”

He then prophesies the destruction of Jerusalem, “you and your children within you.” The city will be utterly obliterated.

But catch the reason: “And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”

…You missed it

It’s odd to me, because the people are about to welcome him, at last, with even a fraction of the welcome he deserves. In fact, he’s glad of their praise, and replies to the Pharisees’ commands to rebuke them. “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.”

But he, being God and all, sees the crowd’s reason has very little to do with who he actually is.

The end of the week will betray them as fair-weather friends. They want a king who conquers their current oppressor, their current enemy.

Their current If Only.

What they thought were the “things that make for peace” were not, in fact, what would bring them peace. They didn’t know the Presence that was within their own walls, walking among them, drinking from their wells, waving in the market, listening to them and tearing a crusty loaf with them.

I’ll tell you what I want–what I really, really want

I thought of this there in the rosy Colorado light in 2023, surrounded by my If Only. I knew what I thought were the things that would make for peace. I knew what kind of King, what kind of Conqueror I wanted.

I scrawled a line down the center of a journal page. On one side, Things I think will make for peace. 

On the other, What God says will make for peace.

What if I was ignoring the presence–and the peace–in my midst?

What if God wanted more than to answer my prayers? What if, in all this, he wanted to give me more of…him?

Does God care about my If Only?

I still believe my If Only to be legitimate. And legitimate in God’s eyes, too.

Jesus grew up under the boot of the Romans. He’d likely seen the fear in his mother’s eyes, the dread in his father’s of having enough to pay the tax collectors–and perhaps the food staples they went without. Perhaps the Roman soldiers roughed up a local girl. Surely the stories surrounding the genocide of toddler boys was recounted in his hearing.

I don’t think Jesus was saying their longing for a deliverer was a bad thing. God delivered his people with manna, the splitting waves of the Red Sea, a smooth stone to the temple of a behemoth bully.

But so often, we long for deliverance more than Deliverer.

(I know I do.)

I don’t know what you think will make for peaceful parenting. Truly, I hope you find a more peaceful home. Heck, I hope I do.

But long with me, search for me, for the Prince of Peace more than the peace itself.

Dealing with your If Only? You might like

• A Happy Chaos: Or, What Peace Isn’t
• When Your Child is Different from What You Expected
• When Your Child’s Weaknesses Feel Overwhelming
• Bouncing Back: Helping Your Child Open the Gift of Failure