Hands down, parenting is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. The lion’s share of my guilt and shame are connected to being a father. It’s the context where I ache for so much but deliver so little, the place where my inability, incapacity, and failure are so profoundly highlighted. While every parent’s experience is unique, the commonality is the perpetual mirror we are all required to peer into, willingly or not.
At this stage in life, we are journeying through the teenage years with three of our kids and have our youngest at the tail end of her elementary years. Looking back, each season has contained unique joys and sufferings. The one constant has been the anvil and the hammer. I’ve come to the end of my rope countless times and found these words on my lips, “I’m done, I can’t do this anymore.”
Normally throwing my hands up only induces more guilt and self-hatred. It only takes a few laps in the pity pool to realize the dead-end of self-condemnation. I’m learning it is more constructive to own my despair and embrace its function in my life. Paul points us in this direction as he instructs us on the unexpected purpose of despair.
He tells us the Corinthian believers of a time when he and his missionary team were “afflicted” and “so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself” (2 Cor 1:8). Paul knew what it was to come to the end of himself, to be crushed under excessive weight, and to feel soul-sinking despair. He doesn’t leave it there though; he tells us his experience was not pointless, it was infused with purpose…it was “to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead” (2 Cor 1:9).
Despair functions like death, it rids us of all strength, personal confidence, and false hope—it clears the way for life by putting us in the ground. Our reliance on ourselves is our greatest liability—despair is a corrective to this self-dependence as it cuts the legs out from underneath us and points us to our only true hope. The redemptive role of despair is to kill that we might live, but it is no good to us unless we follow its signposts to the God of the empty tomb.
The God of resurrection specializes in death, it is here his creative power is unleashed and we see his unmatched capability. God is intent on leading us to this place because this is where all the resources for parenting are found. Have you tasted the complete powerlessness you have as a parent? Do you know the impossibility of changing your child’s heart? Do you know the bankruptcy of behavior modification in your family’s journey? Do you know the impotence of your own abilities, plans, and dreams?
When we know our bankruptcy as parents and throw ourselves on the God who conquers death, we are in the right position. It’s his mercy, his strength, and his creative work that we desperately need worked in our lives and our children. With so many impossible parenting situations, we desperately need the God of endless possibility. We need hope, the hope that no situation is too difficult or too painful for God’s merciful intervention. I don’t want to sit in my despair, I want to run like John to the empty tomb—as fast as I possibly can (Jn 20:3-4).