Created For Freedom!

When I think back to the days and the nights that lead me to the breaking point, I am amazed that it took so long for me to realize that I needed help.  They say that hindsight is 20/20 this may be true, but when I look back on those days and nights, I still only see the confusion.  It was 2011, and I was now a father of three. Ambler was four years old, Samuel was two and a half, and Karis was only months old.  Elaine took a trip to Alabama with Karis, our newest bundle of joy and I was entirely in charge of Ambler and Samuel.  It would be just over a week, and I knew that I could handle it and that is the attitude that I wanted to show on the outside.  Inside there was fear and a need to control.  Ambler and I would be fine, but my concern was rooted in Samuel.  Samuel pushed all of my buttons. He had a way that I did not understand.  Samuel did what he wanted to do, and I had a deep-rooted desire to control him.  Once Elaine left it was as if time stood still, every second seemed to last a minute, and the multiplication grew.  To say that time dragged on would be an understatement in my view. It was a week of turmoil and terror for all three of us.  As Samuel would go about with the way he lived his two and a half years of life, it would push me to the point of breaking.  During this week I must have lost control and shown my two children the worst of me.  In the end, we got through the week.  The days after were the hardest because I dealt with guilt and fear wondering how things would turn out if things didn't change for me.  I had come to one powerful realization during that week; it was I who needed help.  In my searching for help during the weeks and months that followed, I stumbled upon the book Loving Your Kids On Purpose.  


Once the book was in my hands, I read it in one day.  It was as if it knew my thoughts and feelings.  I remember taking some of the points and putting them into practice that very night at dinner.  I made it a point not to mention the book to Elaine; I wanted to see if the book had impacted me. I wanted to know if I had begun to gain control over myself.  Dinner was excellent and my interactions with my family that night were different than they had been for quite some time.  After the kids went to bed, I remember Elaine asking me what was going on and that something had changed.  It was then that I exploded with excitement telling her about the book that I just spent the day reading, and how it impacted my thoughts and actions about how I wanted to live in relationship with my children.  


In the book Loving Your Kids On Purpose by Danny Silk, Danny introduces the concept of knowing what your bottom line is in the relationship that you have with your children.  This concept challenged me to the core as I began to transform the relationship that I had with my children. I began to focus on this relationship and being in control of me.


Created for freedom was the first lesson that I had to learn from chapter one.  Danny explains that created for freedom is one of the key points in our relationship with God.   In the relationship that we have with God, we are free to love and honor Him. We are free to live in the positive and we are also free to live in the negative. We are free to not receive His love and we are free to live a life that dishonors Him.   In my relationship with Samuel, his freedom was my greatest tension.  Samuel knew that he was designed for freedom and lived out each of his days expressing his freedom, which would push all of my buttons.  He was so different than Ambler.  Ambler seemed always to seek to please me even at a very young age.  It wasn't that Samuel did not wish to please me it was that his life of freedom and the choices that he made did not please me.  I assumed that my children would always seek to please me in all of their choices.  I responded to Samuel with a need to control. I wanted him to make the choices that I wanted him to make. I wanted to control him. I longed to remove his freedom.  My need for control ruled and governed our relationship.  In our relationship with God Danny explains that "without the freedom to reject Him, we are powerless to choose Him."  The tension that I put on the relationship with Samuel removed his choice and made him powerless.  This need to control made a mess of things.  Often we feel if we can control our children's choices and decisions we are protecting them and leading them to become the people God created them to be.   Danny Silk explains that when we seek to control our children's every choice and behavior it reveals that we are living in fear of our child's poor choices.  Living in fear will cause us to be the scariest person we can be in the relationships we have with others.  1 John 4:18 says,  "There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love."  Fear and Love are enemies to each other and just as love drives out fear, fear will drive out love. When love is driven out of our relationships, the only result is anxiety.  Anxiety will lead us to seek to control, and when our bottom line is control, there is no freedom in the relationship.  


For me, freedom came when I came to understand the concept of "Peace In A Plan."  Danny encourages us to have a plan just as God has a plan for our mistakes.  God's plan for our mistakes is the Cross.  God created us to be free and allowed us to make mistakes, but He was never going to freak out over our mistakes because He had a plan.  God's plan allows us to grow and continue our relationship with Him even though we will make mistakes in our freedom.  Knowing that God has taken care of our sin issues and devised a plan gives us the freedom to grow in relationship with Him and allows us to manage our freedom with maturity.  Danny put's it this way.  "That is the heart attitude that we must communicate to our children if we are going to cultivate a right representation of the Father’s love in them."  If God is not afraid of our mistakes, then we must not be afraid of our children’s mistakes.


I would say that in the early part of Samuel’s life I lived in fear of his mistakes, and the choices that he would make.  When I started to live with a plan, I began to live in freedom which allowed Samuel to live in freedom.  


When Danny talks about having Peace In A Plan, he is pointing us to the peace that comes when we live with a plan. The plan is two-fold in fashion.  We have to have a plan that tells us how we will react when our children make mistakes, and they will make mistakes.  This plan involves being at peace with the fact that they will make mistakes. The other part of the plan is knowing how we will keep our relational connection with our children as we walk with them through their mistakes.  When I realized that I would be okay with Samuel's mistakes, there was a great sense of relief, and my anxiety dropped.  For me, a huge root was the fact that I never knew how I should react to his actions and his mistakes.  Once I came to peace with the new bottom line in our relationship I knew that no matter what his choices were I was going to focus on our connection.  Having a plan created freedom for me, which allowed Samuel and I to strengthen our connection.  


Danny is a master of plans when his children make mistakes; he has a plan for how he will respond to their mistakes. He knows how he will respond and he is very creative in how he will process with his children through their choices and mistakes. 


Having a plan allows us to live in freedom and when we live in freedom, we can allow others to live in freedom around us.


I want to leave you with one last quote from the book Loving Your Kids On Purpose.  This quote impacted me greatly as I processed a new bottom line for my parenting.  "So, at the heart of godly parenting is the conviction that the mistakes and failures of our children are not the enemy. The real enemy is bondage, and if we don’t teach our children how to walk in and handle freedom, they won’t know what to do with it."  For me this statement caused me to evaluate my bottom line and the end goal of my parenting.  Someday my children will leave home, and when that day comes, I want them to know and respect the freedom that comes with it.  


Here are some action points for you to consider as you journey through this blog.

• Have you evaluated your bottom line in parenting?
• Can you state your bottom line as a mission statement?
• How do you live in freedom?  
• Do you have a plan to process your children's choices and mistakes?
• Are you and your spouse in agreement with the bottom line in your parenting?  
• Pick up a copy of this book and join the journey today.

-Chris Henderson
​Next Generation Pastor