What Grace Means To Me

This is an edited version of a note I once wrote on facebook. I thought it was worth reposting here.

It is no secret to most of you that in our home we do not promote or practice the typical Christian means of disciplining. We are of a minority of Christian believers who spare the literal rod (though not the figurative one) and instead use what’s been coined as Grace-Based Discipline also known as GBD.

When one becomes a parent, they quickly learn that there are many parenting styles and choices out there. However most parenting philosophies typically fall somewhere on a line between one of two extremes: punitive or permissive. Having a punitive parenting style is having one that “aims to inflict punishment.” It is a form of behavior modification, attempting to make the child feel bad so that they won’t perform the behavior again. Permissive parenting on the other hand is accepting and allowing a behavior to happen over and over and over again. This can be seen in the common parenting style called “Taking Children Seriously” or TCS.

I think a common misconception of GBD is that it falls on the permissive side of parenting. There is somehow this misunderstanding that “Grace” = “Permissive” and that if you are applying Grace-Based Discipline to your child you must be a permissive parent. But if Grace is permissive, than this would mean God is permissive. Is God permissive? If not, than what *is* grace?

The most common definition of grace that we hear is “unmerited favor.” This is a very true definition of grace as we all know that none of us deserve, nor could we ever earn, the love, favor, mercy, grace and acceptance that we have from our Heavenly Father. However, I want to take the concept of grace a step farther and explain some of what I have learned in my parenting journey.

GBD has many handy tools to use as parents. One of them being The 5 Steps. If you read the link you will see that Step 3 and Step 4 are “Offer Help” and “Help.” It is within this parenting tool that I gained a revelation and began to understand a new meaning to Grace. See Grace is not just letting someone do something over and over and over again and forgiving it. Grace is setting a standard, and when that person cannot reach that standard, it is stepping in and helping them to reach that standard. This is exactly how I see God’s grace. God had a standard of Righteousness that not one of us could reach. In order for us to attain this standard He had to send us help by becoming flesh and dying and shedding his blood for us. His grace gave us the ability to achieve Righteousness before God when we had no ability to do that.

God extends this same kind of grace to me everyday. When He sets a standard in my life, usually it is something too high for me to attain on my own. It is only because “His grace is sufficient for me,” and it is only because “His power is made perfect in my weakness” that I can ever live up to the godly standards that He sets. I could never do these things on my own. I remember one time when God had prompted me to approach someone and ask them to forgive me for a wrong I had done them– a very humbling and scary thing to do. My first reaction was to resist this urge and ignore it. If God’s Grace was permissive, He would have allowed me to keep ignoring what He really wanted me to do. But God’s Grace is NOT permissive. Instead God 5- stepped me. I heard a still small voice say “Can you do this or do you need some help?” My reply to Him “I need help!” Suddenly the grace of God filled me and gave me the strength to do what I did not have the strength to do before. That my friends, to me, is the true meaning of God’s Grace! It is not wimpy and permissive. It is strong and bold and freeing! God’s grace enables the alcoholic and drug addict to be free from their addictions! God’s grace enables the person so bound by their anger to reach out and offer mercy instead of wrath. God’s grace frees us from our sins and sets us to a higher standard. God’s grace is “unmerited favor” to mold and shape us to be more like Christ when we have nothing within us that would be Christ-like. And this is how I choose to parent my children: to offer grace, to offer help, when they cannot reach standards that we have set for them. It is NOT allowing them to continue their destructive behavior, but true Grace-Based discipline is teaching, modeling, and offering help when a child cannot do it on their own for whatever reason. It is extending to these little people what God extends to me.

Embracing Motherhood

Most everyone who enters the realm of parenthood experiences the raw reality and hard transition of going from an independent, self-sufficient adult to suddenly having a small human who relies on you 24/7. Being able to do what I want, when I want to suddenly now being hindered at my ability to go certain places, or even the time it might take for me to get to those places, meant that though motherhood came quite naturally to me in some ways, in other ways it took some getting use to.

A friend once asked me "When were you able to fully accept your role as a mother?"
I could actually tell you the exact time and date that it happened. It was a moment of realization I will never forget. My firstborn son was 18mo old at that time. Having taken a course on Childhood Developement before we were married, my husband and I had decided that we would not spank our children. However, when my little guy became mobile we fell into the societal norm of the common "hand slap" to try to "teach" him not to touch things. Only my son is so persisitant that this did not "work" for him. So what do you do? keep slapping him? slap harder? My heart broke that we were even doing this to him and I felt a strong conviction to stop. But then we were left with "Well, but then what DO we do?" How do we teach him not to touch things?" We had no other tools in our parenting belt and we were feeling rather flustered in our skills.

Then one evening I found GentleChristianMothers. I clicked on the Articles and Resources and began reading and reading and reading. I could not get enough of it. I read so many articles that night and into the next several days that I couldn't tell you anymore which one it was exactly that made the most impact. But as I was reading one of the articles a mom was sharing how "discipline" can mean "to teach, to train, or to instruct" and how we can do this all the time! She shared how telling her kids that "cars are dangerous and can smash you just like that leaf in the road" was a form of discipline. Suddenly I had the most amazing "Ah ha!" moment. THIS is what motherhood is all about. THIS is what I am home with my kids for. To discipline them, to take *every one* of life's moments and use it to teach them about something. This was the moment of embrace for me. It was the moment I was suddenly able not to care what all my single friends were off doing. I had vision. I had a purpose for this season of life and I was excited about it!

4 years and two more kids later I can tell you that this vision has not changed. In fact it has grown. I have been delighted over and over to watch the fruit of my labor. My kids are not prefect. My kids are like any other young children in that they get tired or hungry and melt down and have fits and all the other wonderful things that come with having immature little people in your life. But I have stepped outside the mindset of viewing discipline as "punishment." Instead, Discipline is what I do 24/7  365.

I wouldn't have it any other way.  

To Everything There Is A Season

I have always loved writing. Growing up it was usually in the form of journaling or poetry as well as my silly attempts as a third grader to write an actual book. That "book" is in deed quite amusing to read now.

I am also what I like to call a "social introvert" This means I am not shy. I love to be around people and gatherings and I enjoy being social. However, in order to refuel myself, and in order to process the life that is speeding by before me, I MUST have some "Me Time."

"Me Time" is something very hard to come by as a mother of 3 young children. It is even harder to find when you are the mom of a special needs child. So for the past 5 years as I parented my high needs baby who became my high needs toddler and then high needs preschooler, time to myself to process anything going on was very rare.

But this August we gathered together a Buzz Lightyear lunchbox and a SpiderMan backpack and sent my firstborn to be a schoolboy for the very first time. After all the hugging and picture taking was done and we waved goodbye to that yellow bus, we came home and my 2yr old immediatly became occupied in her world of self-play while the baby also entertained herself somewhere close by. I soon found myself in a happy rhythm of fullfilling my responsibilities as well as also finding time to relax in my own home. Wow, so this is what "normal" is like? That's not to say that my 2 daughters don't still keep me busy, they do! But I am somehow now able to accomplish in a day what use to take more than a week. And I am able to find time amidst the daily grind to go inside myself again and think. To an introvert like me, this was especially refreshing.

So I decided to start this blog, because well, I have time for it! It is a new season of life for me and a lot that has been put inside me these last 5 years is dying to get out. "InMostMusings" was not my first, nor my 100th, pick of blog and domain names. I am a bit behind the times and just about every word in the english language was already taken. But "inmostmusings" is what I found available that also best describes my reasons for starting this blog:

 "To Everything There is a Season" - perhaps this is my season for writing things down again.