Day 3

“Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.” (Psalm 51:6, ESV)

“For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned…. Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.” (Romans 12:3, 9, ESV)

“But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.” (John 4:23, ESV)

Emotional strength is the difference between being frustrated with a soul-sucking office environment and taking it out at home on your preschooler versus dealing with that emotion with God while at work or in your car on the way home. It’s the difference between fearfully forbidding your preteen from hanging out with certain friends versus collaborating with your kids to make wise yet loving friendship decisions.

Practicing emotional intelligence as Christians empowers us to test our feelings and inclinations at any moment by asking ourselves questions like these:

• Which parts of my desires and perspectives are legitimate, even holy?
• Which parts are corrupted or out of their God-given order? (See Jonah 4; Luke 15:28-32.)
• How is God present with me in this situation?
• How can I honor him and his image bearers with how I respond?

The magic of instilling emotional health in our kids lies in being emotionally healthy. Cliché, but true: We repeat what we don’t repair. What issues from your past have you neglected to look in the eye in order to do the hard work of healing?

Call me an alarmist, but I have found that how emotions are managed within parenting fight-flight-freeze moments can reverberate for decades, even generations.

We all know families whose combustible anger or suppression of conflict borders on legendary. We have friends who don’t talk to Dad anymore. Or those for whom Mom’s anxiety defined their childhood.

Most of us parent the way we were parented—until the pain of staying the same finally outweighs the pain of changing (or until you open your mouth at 4:02 p.m. on a Tuesday and one of your parents falls out).

Some of us are still yelling because our dads yelled or perfect-performing because our moms guilted us. Or are emotionally constipated because feelings were minimized or seen as the enemy to godliness in our house.

Think about it: Your obstacles with your own parents are likely emotional health issues.

Our inability to productively tackle what’s hard, due to our own emotional landscape, can leave our kids vulnerable and left to wing it on their own. Or perhaps worse, to get help from someone else. When we don’t look tough issues in the eye, where will our kids turn?

Wise exploration and expression of feelings is a daily maintenance task, because these moments of powerful potential pop up on an average Thursday when you’re answering your child’s questions about same-sex attraction. Or when you discover your child or their friend shoplifting. Perhaps it’s when you’re discussing God’s response to someone else’s moral failure. Or when you find something in your child’s backpack or on their phone that you wish you could unsee.

Your emotional strength in the moment—or your lack of it—could lead you to connect or to disconnect; to truly see your children or to deny reality; to receive and shepherd or to ignore and scold.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.