When Parenting is Scary

How Can We Lead in the Unknown?

I stumbled upon a social media post by a concerned mama the other day and her honest vulnerability – about the future, about what school might look like for her soon-to-be kindergartener, about all of the unknown – became viral. The comments exploded with yes and amen fears of raising our kids in a scary and sanitized world.

Often times the hardest part of parenting is the navigating the roads we haven’t traveled before. We arrive on the scene with only a few scenarios in our playbook – from our past or, perhaps, tips we have accrued from friends who have gone before us. But when we venture into the unknown and try to train our children in challenges we have never met, it can easily feel like a language we don’t speak.

It’s uncomfortable and unclear. We’re uncertain and unsteady. The atmosphere is a hot house for fear.

Into the Unknown

What does it look like to raise kids in a world of masks and protective screens, scary viruses and scarier newsfeeds? How do we guide them through the muddy waters of communication online, through screens and notifications and an entirely new set of expectations? What if we opted out altogether – changed direction or made a course correction?

It can feel like a new frontier, right?

Maybe. But maybe…not.

Unpacking Truth

Today as I was studying Numbers 13 I read about those spies who went into Canaan to check out the land. I read about Moses who told the spying men to be of good courage and bring back fruit.

This was the long promised and long awaited land of milk and honey. It was the land God parted a sea to bring them to. This was the land they hungered for, were protected for, were rescued to delight in.

We can’t read the struggle (and God’s provision) in Exodus and not feel a huge sense of anticipation for what God’s people are now standing on the edge of, can we? It’s all right there in front of them and Moses, by God’s command, is sending out a few forerunners to check out the new land.

And you know how the story goes. The land is good. The fruit is plentiful. But the inhabitants are scary and all of the spies, but Caleb and Joshua, crumble. They stare hard at themselves, “we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers” (Numbers 13:33) rather than fixing their eyes on the God who had just provided for their every single need to bring them this far.

Fear was just as contagious then as it is now.

“Then all the congregation raised a loud cry, and the people wept that night. And all the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The whole congregation said to them, “Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would that we had died in this wilderness! Why is the LORD bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become prey. Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?” (Num. 14:1-3)

Sound familiar?

This is where the story gets a little familiar, friend. These are parents who knew God. They had traveled with Him, had seen His power and provision from the front row. They were on the edge of a new and unfamiliar frontier. And they were scared. Really stinking scared. Both for themselves and for their families.

We kind of know that feeling, don’t we? There is a whole new level of fear and frustration that grows in us when we realize the real and ugly, hard and scary things, may not only impact us,  but our children as well.

But in their angst, this is where the Israelites made a critical mistake. Gripped by horizontal fear, fear of what was in front of them rather than fear of the God who was and is and would continue to go before them, they crumbled. 

They cried and complained and begged for slavery, for desolation, for anything, but God. And in doing so they completely lost sight of the real threat, the real sin tendency of their own heart. Disobedience, doubt, and separation grew where faith and courage could have, should have.

The Result

In Numbers 14:31 even as God dishes out discipline for their lack of belief, He makes provision for their children, “But your little ones, who you said would become prey, I will bring in, and they shall know the land that you have rejected.”

Do you see it, friend? The threat was never to their children, the threat was to their faith. Fear plagued their hearts and they failed to see what was true. When things got scary – would they believe? Would they trust Him? On the edge of new frontiers would they have faith that the God who had provided faithfully would do it again? 

Or would they trust the news? Would they trust their own size and strength? Would they trust the doubters and worriers who chose to be faithless and get a little loud about it?

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What our kids really need

If this is starting to get a little uncomfortable, a little too familiar, friend, I know. This living and active Word, full of what the world would like to tell you is old stories and old Truth speaks of an immutable, unchanging God.

We are called to know Him and fear Him. We are called trust Him and believe that He really does work things out for our good and for His glory. It is essential that we remember that He loves our kids even more than we do and He is equipped to provide for them (and us) no matter what new frontiers lie ahead.

Friends, the most important thing we can give our kids right here, right now, is a mama who believes in a big God. In an unsteady world our children need to know, through the words and actions of their parents, what it means to have faith in a God who always has been and will continue to be steady in every storm. Let them see it. I guarantee you they are hearing scary things, seeing scary things in greater proportions these days, just as we are. But as 1 Corinthians 10:6 says, referring to those very Israelites we just discussed, “these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did.”

Woah, right? 

There is nothing like God’s Word for instruction. There is nothing like His faithful teaching, His time-honored example, telling us Who He is and how He works in new frontiers and old frontiers and on every frontier.

He is faithful. Believe it. Let’s proclaim it. Let’s pass it on to our kids, friend. He is the only one worthy of our fear. May it show.