Our kids can break our hearts in lots of different ways. It may be really poor decisions they’ve made that are either short-term or have long-term ramifications for them. It could be that it has long-term consequences for us. It could be they break our hearts because of the level of trust that has been broken, or we are seeing them go down roads that we know are harmful to them.

So regardless of the ways our children break our hearts, it again is going back to saying, Lord, these kids need you. They need you to move in their hearts and sometimes it’s tempting as a parent for me to take it personally, that this is a personal affront against me and how dare they do this?

And when I have that mentality, I forget that their hearts are actively at work here and that they’re strugglers, and they desperately need the Lord to be relevant in the midst of their lives. And so I deal with my broken heart by taking it to the Lord, by asking him to help me know how to respond by grieving where grieving is appropriate and being sad where being sad is appropriate. But then I also say, Lord, help me to put that aside and really engage well with my child based on what they need.

Julie Lowe
Faculty
Topics:
CHILDREN, GRIEF, PARENTING, TRUST