When You Regret How You Parented Your Kids

By the time Christina Lemur was grown, the

distance between her and her father was just a fact of her

life. Whatever had gone wrong in the raising of her had hardened

into the way things were. She wasn't waiting for it to change,

and she'd stopped expecting anything different from him.

Then, later in his life, her father did something she hadn't

seen coming. He brought it up himself. He started to say he

was sorry for the past and for how he'd been. We'll come back

to what she did with that, but first,

welcome to Daily Devotions for Busy Lives. I'm Bart Leger. I've

had this conversation with more parents than I can count.

Somebody reaches a certain age and starts thinking about their

regrets during their parenting years. They were too or not

strict enough. They missed too much of it. They said a thing at

a dinner table years ago that their grown daughter still

brings up, and every time I hear a parent doing that, I end up

doing my own inventory because I have a list too. have one is not

looking closely enough. A lot of parents get to a point where

they look back at 20 years of raising kids and see things they

would have done differently. You were more critical than you

needed to be. Maybe you said things you can't unsay. Maybe

you worked through years when you should have been there at

the table, and now they're grown. The window for changing how you

did it closed while you weren't even watching. You can't go back

and be a gentler father or a more caring mother to a

nine-year-old who is 34 now. So you just live with a regret.

There's a verse about God as a father that I want you to hear

from the parents' side of it. Psalm 103, 13 and 14.

Look at the reason the verse gives for the compassion. He

remembers we are only dust. God's tenderness toward you is

tied to what he knows about the material he's working with. He

made you. And he knows what we're parenting through. He also

knows what your own father handed you to work with when you

started. He's not grading you against some other parent who

had more sleep and more help than you had. He knows what you

were working with because he watched you do it. So bring him

the regret. It's welcome at the throne of grace. The verse says

he is tender toward the people who fear him. And tender is a

strange word for God until the day you need it. A father who

remembers your dust doesn't flinch when you tell him what

you got wrong. And here's where this turns. You still have a

relationship with these people. They are adults now and adults

can be talked to. You get to be a different kind of parent to

them starting this month. You can go to your grown son or

daughter and admit your regrets. You can say, I was harder on you

than I should have been. And I've thought about it for years.

You don't need a speech for that. And you don't need them to take

it well. And Christina didn't quite know what to do with it.

The apology didn't erase the years or tie the past up neatly.

Things were just too complicated for that. But her father had

done the part that was his to do. He went first. He admitted his

part without waiting for her to make it easy. And that gave her

something to start with. She found she could take a step

toward him also. The repair began in adulthood, years after

childhood was over because one parent decided it wasn't too

late to try. Look at what her father did with the last stretch

of his life. He went first. And nothing was forcing him to. He

didn't wait for her to meet him partway or for her to make it

comfortable for him. The years stayed exactly what they were.

And the two of them still found somewhere to start. That's the

part you have access to today. And here's today's challenge.

Take the thing you keep replaying and say it out loud to

God first. Tell him the specific version of it. The afternoon or

the sentence you keep coming back to. He already knows. And

saying it moves it out of your head and into his hands. Then

send your grown child a message with one line of it in there or

call them. I have been thinking about how I handled some things

when you were younger, and I know I've got parts of it wrong,

or maybe much of it. That's the whole message. Leave off the

request for a response and then leave the rest up to God. Father,

you call yourself tender and compassionate. And you say the

reason is that you remember we're dust. Thank you for that.

For every parent listening who is going back through years they

can't get back, meet them with tenderness that you promised.

Give them the courage to say what needs to be said to a grown

child this week and do what only you can do in the room that

opens up after they say it. In Jesus' name, amen. episode

encouraged you today, would you share it with someone who might

need to hear it? Just go to DailyDevotionsForBusyLives.com

slash 327 and copy the link. It only takes a second, and it

might make a real difference in someone's day. Thanks for

joining me on Daily Devotions for Busy Lives. Remember, God

remembers that you're dust, and he is tender about it. Bring him

the regret, and then say one sentence to your kid. Come back

next time for more encouragement to help you live grounded in

God's truth. Until then, God bless, and have a great day.