May, at least in our house, has become the new December. It’s the month when it seems that no matter how hard you try to be organized, to keep your cool, to have a tight reign on the schedule, and to communicate effectively, it all falls apart.

There are end of school celebrations, final exams, kids pining away about the last days of school… it’s always like an unexpected gut punch when we find ourselves stretched too thinly, committed to more things than we can reasonably accomplish, and at the end of our collective ropes.

This year it was multiplied, because for the first time, we had a child actively engaged in the graduation process and everything that it entails. And to pile on, there was the added emotional toll this season of life takes. If you have been through it before, the season when you are about to cut a child loose to live and make decisions on their own, you understand that it comes with a completely new and potentially guilt-inducing set of questions:

• Have we done enough?
• Can he make good and right decisions?
• Is he spiritually ready for this next phase of life?
• What’s going to happen to our family dynamic?

All very real questions, but there’s one more that is the most difficult of all both to ask and to try and answer:

Have we failed him?

As parents, we all know that our children are a blessing from the Lord. But like all blessings, there are responsibilities. We are meant to help our children grow in all kinds of ways – physically, emotionally, and spiritually. They have been entrusted to us, and so this last question is really a reflection of that reality.

Have we failed him?

Did we teach him enough? Challenge him enough? Strike the right balance of independence and accountability? Did we provide the right amount of discipline at the right time? Did we communicate the love of God and our own love as well?

Now here’s the discouraging truth with regard to the question.

Have we failed him? Yes. Absolutely we have. We have failed him in both ways we know of, and ways we don’t know of yet. We have absolutely failed him.

Surprisingly, though, this truth is discouragingly encouraging for at least two reasons:

1. First of all, it brings light to our deep fears as parents.

It has been said that sunlight is the best disinfectant, and that is true in this case. There is a great deal of freedom that comes when we actually verbalize not only what it is that we fear, but then actually own up to the uncomfortable truth behind it. It’s not unlike the dynamic of confession:

Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed (James 5:16). 

Notice that we are to confess our sins to each other, not so that we can be forgiven, because forgiveness of sin comes from God. No, we are to confess to one another – to bring our sin into the open – so that we might be healed.

Something similar happens with the acknowledgment that we have not been perfect parents. That we have, and will continue to, fail our children despite our best efforts. There is a measure of healing that comes when we begin to acknowledge our failings.

2. Secondly, it reminds us of the best thing we can do.

Should we try our best to protect our children? To provide for them? To teach them and train them in godliness? Absolutely. And yet despite all these things, the reality is that we cannot control what happens in and to our children. Sometimes we think we can – and we even misunderstand certain passages in Scripture to mean we can. Mainly, a verse like this:

Train up children in the way they should go,
    and even when they are old they will not turn from it (Proverbs 22:6).

This is not a promise from God; proverbs don’t work like that. They are instead statements of wisdom; they are descriptions of the way life generally works in the way God has set it. They are principles for living wisely. No, here again we are confronted with the reality that despite our best efforts, we cannot engineer our children. The best thing we can do, however, is entrust them to the Lord.

To pray for them. To support them. And to trust that the Lord can continue to use us, as radically imperfect parents that we are, to influence our children toward a life-long love of and service to Jesus.

Yes, parents, we have failed them. Thank God that He never will.