MOST nights you will find Team Davis eating dinner together
around the dinner table. Granted, this
has lately involved me laying on the couch with my feet up looking at the
dinner table trying to reduce the size of my preggo feet.
There are a few rules around the table:
- NO electronics or toys – purely family time and conversation
- NO getting up without asking to be excused (which at the end of the meal includes a “thank you” to whoever made or bought the meal)
- LISTEN when others are talking and do not talk over them
For the most part, the kids (and the parents) do a pretty
good job at the rule following. Most
dinners also involve a “Best Part/Worst Part of Day” or as some people call it
“the highs/lows”. During one of these
conversations Taylor was expressing her frustrations around a particularly
difficult day and that all their friends tell them they have “bad
parents”. Her face quickly showed the
fear of repeating such a statement and you could see that she was certain there
would be some consequence for calling us “bad”.
Instead I smiled…
Me: That’s great! I’m glad your friends think I’m a bad mom
Jordan: Doesn’t it make you angry that they call you bad?
Me: Nope! You talk about these kids all the time (note:
these kids are particularly mean, bullying, selfish, spiteful children) – I
don’t want to be the kind of mom they think is “good”.
Taylor: They say you are bad because you don’t let us have
our own smart phones and that you won’t let us get on youtube by ourselves or
search Google whenever we want.
Me: Exactly! I’ll proudly take the title of “Bad Mommy” if
protecting you, loving you, and raising you the way God has called me to is
“bad”.
This got me thinking about John 15:17-19
18 “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me
before it hated you.19 If you were of the world, the world would love you as
its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the
world, therefore the world hates you.
Let me define “world”.
By “world” I mean anyone that is not a Christian (defining Christian well
would take another 5 pages so I’m going to skip that for now). In other words, the “world” hated
Christ. Because we have surrendered our
lives to live the way Christ has called us, they therefore hate us.
My kids deal with the “hate” of the world on a daily
basis. From being picked on because they
follow the rules (as Taylor puts it “you can only be in the ‘cool’ group at
school if you do stuff that is bad and makes the teachers angry) to being nice
to those that are being excluded (Taylor talking to the girl in her class with
the yellow teeth and bad breath that everyone makes fun of). It’s hard for them. It’s hard for us (Justin and I) to listen our
kids nearly daily express their hurt around being called names, being
ostracized, and being physically attacked on occasion because they are being
raised to do the RIGHT thing. To add to
that they are picked on because of the choices their parents are making to
protect them from the “world”.
I want to clarify what I mean by “protect them from the world”.
Living in the World is NOT bad. Our entire lives my kids
will be surrounded by the “world”. That
is not bad. In fact, we are called (as
Christians) to “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole
creation.” (Mark 16:15) We are expected to live in the “world” surrounded by
those that are not Christians and that is not a bad thing at all. My kids are
encouraged to talk to us about things they are unfamiliar with or things they
hear that seem to contrary to what we believe.
Like when my 4th grader comes home and asks about why her friends are
talking about how they have sex already.
She asks what that means. Then in 5th grade she asks why they do it if
they aren’t married (or at least they say they are doing it) when we have
taught her that sex is for marriage. We
don’t’ shy away from these conversations, we have them, we encourage them. We explain the biblical principles behind
them so, when it comes time, they can make her own educated choices based on
biblical principles.
We do NOT expose them to things in the world that will
CAUSE them to sin. This can mean
different things to different people.
This can even be different depending on which of my kids we are talking
about. They all struggle with their own
things. For us this means things like
making sure all “Google” searches are done with a parent nearby because even
the most innocent of searches can return something like pornographic
images/sites (which are a sin). This
means things like not allowing my 10 year old to have a cell phone because she
is still learning to stand up for herself (learning to say NO to peer pressure)
and she tells me about the things she has seen on friends phones (yes, 4th
graders are sending penis pictures to each other, using group chats to bully each
other, encouraging each other to steal some cash from their parents, and so
on).
We expect them to LOVE the world. We also explain to them
we are called to love the world. That
we, as Christians, are no better than the world. That we ALL deserve hell. That the only difference between “us” and
“them” is that we have realized our brokenness and made the decision to be a
Christian (again this is a complicated definition that I will not get into
now). That doesn’t make us better. And because of that we should LOVE everyone
like God loves us, Christian or not. It
means that just because somebody might be living a life of sin, doesn’t mean we
get to be mean to them or disrespect them.
So, what is the point of this post?! That’s a great
question.\
The point is that I’m proud to be a ‘bad mommy’. I’m proud of my kids for repeatedly going
against the “flow” of the world and standing strong in their beliefs. I’m proud to say the world hates me because I
refuse to live like those in the world (YES I make mistakes – I’m not perfect).
I proud to admit that we will not shy away from difficult conversations with
our kids about sex, drugs, and rock and roll because it could be uncomfortable.
If the world hates me for doing the right thing, then I’m doing something right
(if a murderer hates you for telling him murder is wrong… that’s a good thing).
BUT it sucks. Having
a child call me names like “bad mommy” doesn’t bother me one bit, but for my
kids it can be devastating. It sucks
that I know it will never really get easier – that their entire lives they will
be ‘hated’. But, we (as Christian
parents) can encourage them that pleasing the Lord is worth more than pleasing
the world. That in the end, all the hate
we experience towards us will be worth it.
