Stop Judging And Start Loving

Jesus answered, . . . “You judge by human standards; I pass judgment on no one.”

JOHN 8:14–15

CATHY ONCE ACCOMPANIED HER DAUGHTER, JAMIE, ON A school trip to Europe. Jamie suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and she was taking prescription medication that sometimes causes a psychotic reaction—which had the unhappy effect of making Jamie even more of an outcast among the kids than she already was.

Cathy watched as the other kids on the trip either ignored Jamie or made fun of her. It’s not as though Cathy couldn’t see that Jamie was different: her gait, her attitude, and the volume of her voice gave cruel kids more than enough fodder for their ridicule. Objectively, Cathy could see why her daughter was ostracized and ridiculed; subjectively, it still hurt.

If you’ve never felt truly embarrassed by one of your kids, you probably can’t imagine what Cathy endured. She loved Jamie, but she felt frustrated by her daughter’s behavior and the bizarre way the drugs and the OCD interacted in her system. She tried to maintain a positive attitude, but the symptoms of children who face psychotic challenges can wear you down. It’s one thing to relate to a mentally challenged kid for an hour, a day, or even a week—but when it goes on and on and on with virtually no break, you can reach a point where you feel pushed beyond your limit. After months and then years of dealing with it, you can snap.

One day, Cathy reached that limit. To her own horror, she heard herself scold Jamie, “Why can’t you just be normal?”

The words hung in the air long after she had spoken them. Shocked, saddened, and hurt by her own behavior, Cathy realized she had just done the same thing as the kids—faulting Jamie for not being “normal.”

We’ve all been there; whether or not we’ve actually verbalized our frustrations to our children, I’m sure most of us have at least thought them. We don’t expect our kids to be perfect, but we often wish they were a little less imperfect than they are now, or perhaps imperfect in a different way.

Jamie has come a long way since that ninth-grade trip to Europe—but Cathy has come even further. She made this honest admission:

What I learned from this very dark time in my life is that it was my shame and my pettiness that had to be revealed in order for me to begin to love Jamie. I was no better than those mean girls on the England trip. Sometimes I didn’t try to see her side and her pain; I was too busy worrying about what others might think. I belittled her, if only in my mind. I needed to stop judging and to start loving. . . . I had to face the ugly side of my behavior, confess it, and pray for change. I had to realize that I am the broken one in need of fixing, not Jamie.

I needed to stop judging and to start loving. . . . I had to realize that I am the broken one in need of fixing, not Jamie. In this, Cathy has given us a golden nugget of truth. She understands a side of parenting that gets far too little attention. We get to choose our spouses, but we don’t get to choose our kids (apart from adoption); they come ready-made by God with all kinds of problems attached. Our job isn’t to judge them for what they’re not but to love them as they are.

Your children may not have OCD, but they certainly have temper tantrums, perpetually messy rooms, selective hearing, and occasional rebellious streaks. These failings can embarrass and frustrate us. They can also tempt us to focus more on what we’re going through than on what our kids are facing—and that’s when we tend to start judging and stop loving.

What it comes down to for me is this: sometimes I simply grow weary of parenting sinners. But every child is a sinner! Thus every child stretches us, pushes us, challenges us, and—by God’s design—teaches us how to love.

This week, every time you’re tempted to think about how embarrassed you feel, how frustrated you feel, how this child tests you to no end, take a deep breath and pray, “God, how do you want me to love this child in this situation? What are her greatest needs? What don’t I understand about him that makes me judge him instead of love him?”

May God grant us all the grace to become a little more like Cathy, who is determined to love, and a little less like the Pharisees, who were so eager to judge.

Heavenly Father, help us to receive our children, with all their innate weaknesses, with the same grace with which you receive us. Remind us that we are the ones who need “fixing,” at least as much as our children. In Jesus’ name, amen.