Proverbs 19:18: Discipline your son, for there is hope; do not set your heart on putting him to death.
This is an intense scripture but rings true to those are in the thick of raising kids and coming up against challenges that feel above their pay grade. We may have a child who is in a season that is ready to clean our clock. We may say to ourselves in that season, “I didn’t sign up for this.” But the good news is you don’t have to do it alone! Even with both husband and wife in best case scenario, raising children can get us feeling like utter failures and hopeless.
Raising our children in community makes our burden as a parent much lighter.
Allowing our children to become open and transparent in a safe, Godly, loving community allows their weakness and shortcomings to come to the light. When they do, those who are invested in our children can come along aside us as parents and help disciple and mentor our children.
Proverbs 22:6 Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.
Training children up in the way they should go can be an overwhelming task. We don’t need to have all the answers and solve all the problems. Part of being a responsible parent is doing the hard work of showing up in a Godly, loving, safe community on a weekly basis and possibly even more frequently so that our children can be discipled outside of just the home.
Homeschooling allows for us to directly disciple and mentor our children through daily devotions, education, the teaching of life skills and walking through life’s challenges first hand. This is such a privilege but it is also the greatest challenge. When we face challenges that seem beyond us, or we feel we have tried everything and are failing daily, we need Jesus and we need a Jesus filled community.
I always tell moms when they feel their child has failed in a community setting and exposed a weakness the parent would have rather them not expose, “It takes a Village”. I say that because it is in those safe places of community when others can speak to those weakness and help our child have the awareness of the need for humility and change. It is when we allow the realities of our children to come to the light that things can be dealt with.
I encourage you today to take up again the responsibility of disciplining our children, having hope and not giving up on our kiddos. I encourage you to get connected to a Jesus filled community, filled with people who love Jesus and then in turn can love you and your children through good days and bad days, days of victory and days of failure.
It Takes a Village!
