Does anyone remember Gomer Pyle? He always said that phrase, Surprise, Surprise! Usually it wasn’t accompanied by a very good surprise, unfortunately.
Recently I had something happen here at the school and it was a great surprise. It was such a surprise to me that I was in awe of how it happened. I was also a little disappointed in myself because I wasn’t able to see the answer come about the way it did. As a Christian, I couldn’t imagine that God would bring about the answer in that way. And then as I acknowledged that I was limiting the power of God, I was even more disappointed in myself. How dare I limit God. His power is so unimaginable. In the Bible it says that He wants us to know how deep, how wide, how long and how high his love is for us and that His power is vast, beyond our comprehension. I guess I shouldn’t be too hard on myself since the Bible says it is beyond our human understanding. But still in my humanness I should be able to know that there are no boundaries to what God can do.
Well, the reason I decided to write this in my blog this time was because I was thinking about my last article, Secret to Success, and I feel that this sort of equates to raising successful children. Are you confused? Stay with me as I make the connection.
God is our heavenly Father and he loves His children with a vast love, as I indicated above. As a parent, the same is true. We love our children with an incredible love that sometimes knows no bounds, right? We would do anything we could for our children within our power. And yet I see parents who put limits on what their child can do. They sometimes talk right in front of them as if they aren’t even there, thinking the child isn’t listening, as they tell someone about their failures or lack of skills, motivation or capability. Without realizing it, the parent is limiting the child by not believing that they can overcome the obstacles in their path and excel beyond what the parent can imagine. Just like we limit God because we can’t imagine what He can do, parents sometimes limit their children because they can’t imagine that their child could excel beyond the parent’s limited knowledge. Or sometimes we as parents limit our children because we never could get beyond that next step. But a child has such wonderful capabilities of doing and being who God created them to be if we only step back, give encouragement and guidance and let them go. Just like us looking at God and not comprehending that He is more than capable of exceeding our expectations, we sometimes look at our children and we can’t comprehend that they are more than capable of exceeding our expectations.
So, another secret to success is to allow our children to be the person God created them to be and not the person that we “see” them to be. So, as the song says, “Let it go”. Let go of what you think should happen and stand back and watch what God can do in the life of your child. By the way, this works in your grown up life too.
Keep honing those parenting skills and see what God can do!
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