Parenting with Patience

"Can you bring me my soccer cleats?" the text message read.

Normally, a request for help from my 12-year-old son wouldn’t be a problem (although a “please” in there may have been nice). However, this request, on this day, had more layers than he could imagine.

Every morning, I awake at 5:55 to leave the house by 6:30 to get my son to middle school by 6:50, so I can get home by 7:15 to get our other children out the door by 8:00 so we can get them to school by 8:15. Then, we get our precious 5-year-old daughter ready to leave for preschool at 9:25 so we can be home by 9:40 to enjoy roughly 4.5 hours to work, clean, run errands, and do all the other behind the scenes stuff that makes a family run. Then, we drop everything and start the pick-up process between the hours of 2:00 and 3:30.

So, yes, dear son whom I love with all my heart, I want nothing more than to receive a text saying, "Can you bring me my soccer cleats?" at 7:38 am after I reminded you three times to make sure you quadruple checked that you had everything you needed for school. Could I also bring you a hot towel and a refreshing beverage?

We have four children still growing in competence, independence, and, yes, memory, so the odds of one of them pushing my patience to the brink on a given day are shockingly high. On my worst days, this reality stirs a whole world of rage. "How did all these children come to live here?" I'll ask my wife as she rolls her eyes as if to say, "Mister... you know exactly how all this happened."

However, on my better days, I'm able to see that my son's forgetfulness is not the problem. Neither is my daughter's tendency to see if more food can reach the ground than her mouth or my other son’s frustrating yet impressive streak of breaking our living room lamp (we are on our third this year).

The problem is me and my lack of patience.

The answer is Christ in me.

The Source of Patience

I just Googled "how to become a more patient parent" (don't judge... you know you have, too). The internet told me I need to know my limits, prioritize resting my body and my mind, learn some breathing exercises, and visualize calm. One site even suggested that if my impatience didn't resolve after trying their prescribed tips, I might consider sending my child to counseling so they can learn to be less of a drain on me.

While I'm sure getting better sleep would likely help, there is an obvious issue with each of Google's fixes for me and my impatience: Each one puts the onus on me to be the solution to my problem. Then, when I inevitably fail, it shifts the blame to my child in a desperately immature act of self-pity.

Hear me out—I believe in the common grace of rest, breathing, boundaries, and counseling. But common grace is no replacement for the work of God, who is the creator of and complete fulfillment of patience.

God first extended patience to Adam and Eve when they disobeyed and lied to him in the garden. Instead of dropping the hammer when the first couple hid from him, God patiently questioned, "Where are you? Who told you...? Have you...?" Even as Adam and Eve introduced sin into the world, God displayed astounding patience.

Later, after the golden calf debacle of Exodus 32, God descends in a cloud to speak to Moses on Mt. Sinai in chapter 34. There, he discloses an often repeated self-revelation: "The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation" (Exodus 34:6-7).

Perhaps most central to our conversation about patience is the phrase "slow to anger" in verse 6. In the original language, this phrase is an idiom that reads "long of nostrils"—a poetic way of saying "he doesn't blow up." This slow-to-anger nature of God is much more than a tolerance for foolishness or a wide margin for childishness. The patience of God is restorative. Exodus 34 stands as a beacon of God's restoration of his people in the face of their greatest sin. At a time when God had every right to blow up in anger, he chose to be "long of nostrils" for the sake of his glory and the restoration of his people. The big, bold, unflinching good news of Exodus 34 is that God's people did nothing and will do nothing to deserve the slow-to-anger character of their creator. Instead, it is simply a part of his nature, freely given to his people without payment.

And so, with that, let me ask you a question: How patient does God have to be with you? A little? A lot? Perhaps you're one of those types that doesn't bother God all that much. You're glad God shows all that patience to the bad people, but you? No, you can't remember the last time God had to be patient with you.

You could likely fill a book with all the ways your family demands your patience, and yet I doubt many of us have paused today, this week, or perhaps even this year to think of the ways God has been remarkably slow to anger toward us.

But to believe the lie that God's patience is mostly unnecessary for us is the beginning of our impatience with others. If you live your life unaware of the ways God and others bear with you in your sin and folly, you may be able to tolerate and manage people, but you will never extend the patience of God to them.

The source of our patience for our spouse, for our children, and for all those who live within the walls of our home comes from knowing the lengths God went through to defeat sin so he could satisfy his righteous impatience toward sin and adopt sinners as his beloved children, with whom his patience knows no end. You, dear friend, will never be able to manage your impatience on your own, and you will never be able to extend patience to others until you see that the one who stands in need of the most patience is you.