When he first got sick, and we took him to a doctor the next day, they didn't really find anything. You know, you you trust the medical professionals in your world. He wasn't okay. Two days later, we're like rushing him to the hospital, and you know, then a week later, he's gone. And you just rewind those moments of your life, and you go, What did I miss?
Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson, and I'm Dave Wilson, and you can find us at familylifetoday. dot com. This is Family Life Today.
Okay, let's talk about parenting guilt. What a great topic! Oh man, I wore that cloak for a long time. We all do. Shame, guilt—like I'm messing up my kids.
We got somebody on the studio days probably never had that guilt. Oh my goodness, Ron Deal. What time is it? Our blended ministry is in the studio. Ron, have you had that?
Absolutely. Has any parent? Do you think there's a parent that hasn't had it?
Somebody who's unconscious, or a total narcissist, total narcissist. I mean, I can remember, you know. Obviously, our kids are old. Our oldest just turned forty. That just scares me.
Unbelievable. We're not that old. We had him as teenagers, but no. I can remember, especially with him, because he's number one. Literally saying things, and in that moment, thinking he's going to be on a counselor's couch.
I just wounded him for life. Yes, you know, like I regret and guilt. I think it's every parent. Oh, and it's not even funny. Like I cried so many nights, thinking, like, why did I say that?
Why did I do that? I should have done this. I should know better. And it can be so overwhelming. It can be.
You guys are reminding me of our good friend Brian Goins. What he says about parenting. What is parenting but preparing your children for therapy? I mean. Of course, we're gonna feel bad about something.
We know we're imperfect people. We want everything for our children, like we want them to be richer than us and more stable in their lives, and all of it. We don't want them to have pain. We don't. We recently had Abby Wedgworth on, and she wrote a book called "Help." I am ruining my kids.
Isn't that a great title? It is a great title. But let me ask you this, Ron: As step parents. Do they feel that even more so? I think so.
If you are conscious of what influence you are bringing to the lives of the children that the Lord has given to you under your care, you are mindful that something's not quite awesome in terms of how you are parenting them and the influence that you are bringing, and that that is going to have some sort of negative impact on them. And it may not be something that was your fault. It just may be something that you are. In the room for, or you're a part of, or sort of passively connected to, and you still feel bad. I mean, nobody ever wants to see a child suffer, and so.
You know whether you can take the immediate blame for that, or it's sort of an indirect connection to whatever's happening. You feel bad about that.
Well, I'm even thinking of maybe somebody that's just recently gone through a divorce. They're not remarried, but they're thinking, "I just wrecked my kid because we got a divorce." Yeah, and if you didn't choose the divorce, your spouse did. You're still sitting there going, "And I'm watching my kids suffer because of this breakup of our family." I mean, that's my childhood. My mom did not choose it. Even though she had to initiate it, it just got so bad.
But I know she felt so much guilt and a protection, like he's lost his dad. How do I navigate this? Then, when my dad remarried, I sensed my stepmom trying to save me from the trauma she knew I went through.
So she was over the top, and she had been through a divorce. Yeah.
So I mean, there's that that complexity. Let me just say something. You've hit on something. Let's talk about this for single. Parents for blended family couples, people of foster parents, adoptive parents who have a child now under the care who has been through some something hard in life, where they wouldn't be in the foster care system.
For example, you want to help and you want to sort of love that pain out of them, and you are trying. And yet, when you see the sadness show up again in their face, you see the anger and how they react to something. You go, "That pain's still there. It's not quite out," you know. What can I do?
That sense of guilt is, I think, even double on top of the regular parent guilt. Can I say it that way? Where we all just want good things for our kids, and we know we just blew it.
Somebody else blew it. You want to try to help move that pain out of them, and you can't seem to get there, and you feel guilty about that too. It's paralyzing. One of the biggest problems we face with the biological parent in a blended family, especially who feels. Sad for their kids and guilty over what the kids have been through, then tries to make up for that by letting them off the hook, by going soft on behavioral management.
By going heavy on compassion and love and care, by buying them everything they ever wanted, sympathy, and that paralyzes that person from following through with parental activity. If I could say it that way, you know the the behavioral limit stuff that we've all got to do in parenting, and so it's you feel like if I. Buy them stuff. If I'm soft, undisciplined, then they won't have any more heart.
Well, guess what? That's a setup when a step parent enters the picture and goes, "Oh, your kids get away with everything. How come you're letting them? You know why is that? You know what?
Somebody's got to stand up and do what's right." And the step parent tries to take over and fix, like your mom or your step mom, Dave. She tried to fix what had happened, and now all of a sudden, that puts a step parent in a bad position. Trying to parent in ways that a spouse or children won't let them do. Ron, one of the step parents just heard them say, "What are you talking about?" Like this family has needed me to step in. I really believe a lot of what we call wicked stepmothers or abusive stepfathers are people who are just trying too hard to fix stuff they didn't.
Bring about, and they don't really have any control over now. But they're they're loving big with their hearts, but unfortunately, they're taking a position with a child of authority that the child doesn't recognize, and that the other biological parent who has gone soft. With the kids has been paralyzed.
Now, undercuts the step parents.
So you are sort of really sabotaged in trying to repair. You're offering what you think is something helpful for the children, but unfortunately, it just keeps you pushed out further, further as an outsider. And the family won't let you in, and won't let you have that voice. And it sabotages not only your parenting, but listen to this: that always sabotages the marriage at the exact same moment. We know life is full of challenges, and families today need biblical truth more than ever.
And as a family life partner, your monthly gift helps bring the truth into homes every single day through podcasts, events, and resources.
So let's make a lasting difference together. Become a partner today. Just go to familylifetoday dot com and click the donate button.
Okay, so I'm sitting here from where we started, thinking, okay, I have regrets. I do too. Let's talk about them. Yeah.
Do you have any? Oh yeah. What would they be? Help! I'm ruining my kids.
What's a regret? When my oldest son was four or five, I was outside, you know, trying to fix something. I had a hammer and some wood. I don't remember what it was. I was doing that.
Sound good. He's sitting in the driveway watching me hammer something and get frustrated. And by the way, when I'm not good at something, that's when I'm I lose my cool. That's my sense of inadequacy coming out. I know that now.
I didn't know that. Let me see, twenty eight years ago, right when he was three, and I got frustrated and threw the hammer down into the cement. And broke the hammer, broke it. Yeah, pretty pretty powerful, huh? Should I be proud of that?
I don't think so. I threw the hammer down, I broke it, and then I look up, and there's my three year old just watching the entire thing. And I was like, he saw all of that. He saw my anger, he saw my frustration, and then I start thinking, I saw my dad do this. This is where I got it.
I'm repeating. My son's going to repeat. What I just did, and I felt horrible.
Now that's a simple little moment. It was sort of ridiculous, really, at the end of the day. But I knew it left something in my child because I had been the recipient of watching that frustration in my. I know how that stuff stays with you, and I thought, I blew it. What do I do now?
I got that regret, not showing up for my family in consistent ways during the years where I was chasing my identity and my work, and I was so focused on that. When I was, I'd be home, but I really wasn't home. Like I think I was eighty percent home. But that twenty percent, I feel guilty over. I think there was seasons of our, of me being a dad where I was a hundred percent involved, and I have a strong relationship with my kids.
And but there were moments where I was unavailable, and I look back and I thought lost opportunity. I have regrets with Connor. For those listening or watching, don't know our son passed away when he was twelve. Our middle son, it's been seventeen years now, and ah. We made decisions to move to a city, to take a certain job, to do a certain thing, and that's where he passed away.
I have, you know, I think about that. I think, okay, if I hadn't chased that opportunity, would he still be here? I mean, that's deep in me. You can, you know, the emotion rises up because I, I just wonder, what's that me? And there were days when, when he first got sick.
And we took him to a doctor the next day. They didn't really find anything, and we just said, "Okay, you know, you you trust the medical professionals in your world." He wasn't okay. Two days later, we're like rushing him to the hospital, and you know, then a week later, he's gone. And you just rewind those moments of your life, and you go, "What did I miss?" Now, in my right mind, I can tell myself, I don't hold the world in my hand. I'm.
I think loss makes us go. I'm really small. I am tiny in the universe, and I thought I was large. I thought I controlled the world. I thought I could protect all my people.
I thought I could do all that stuff, right? And that's sort of the way we approach life. And then loss teaches us: no, no, no, no. You're really small. I am big in my heavenly Father's heart.
I am so valuable, valuable to Him. But in terms of controlling life and the world, I am tiny. And so I know in my right mind I am at peace with that. It was not up to me, but in my heart, because I miss my son, I just wonder: could I have done something? I don't know how we, as loving parents who want the best for our children, I don't know how we'd not wonder those things and have regret.
For sure, when you go before God, what does He assure you when you tell Him all those regrets? Yeah, He reminds me He's the big one. He's the one who sifts everything through His hands and allows what He allows, even though I don't like it that Connor's gone. I know that's not on me. Yeah, but it still.
Yeah, he still would sit there and think through all that. Do you have any? Of course I do. Let me hear yours first. Hear mine.
I mean, honestly, it pales, you know, because it wasn't life or death. One of my sons was on staff with me at the church, and my co-founder laid into him one day in a meeting, and Steve is a great leader, but sometimes he could get angry. Yeah, and and you were present, and I was sitting here, and my son was there, and another staff member was there, and he just laid into him. And if it had been you, Ron, or anybody else on my on my team. I know I would have said, Steve, this is inappropriate.
This is out. It was very angry, and what he was saying was not even you know true. But he was just taken out. But I said nothing because it's my son, and I don't want to be accused of nepotism.
So I let it happen. What a bind! I found out later the other staff member kicked my son under the table. Like, dude, this is so bad. You don't deserve this.
And his dad said nothing. Talk about a regret because I think later he's like, Dad, how did you just sit there and let me get beat up like that? I'm like, Well, you know, I didn't want him to. That was one of those moments where you just step in. I don't care what you think of me.
You know, I'm gonna. I'm going to defend my boy here because it's wrong what's happening to him. Like I would anybody else. Yeah, he shouldn't get. He got the opposite because he's my son.
Instead of favoritism, I yeah, that's a regret. That's one of those double binds where you just didn't feel like you could win for losing. No, yeah. What I regret at this point in my life, when I look back, I regret that I didn't know who I was and my identity yet, and because of that, I. In the early years, parented out of a performance, I cared what people thought of my parenting.
I thought when they looked at my kids, it reflected on me, and so I was very conscious of what they were and they weren't doing. I mean, I have that story of we were at this event with all of our friends, probably thirty of us. And all the food's laid out, and I've shared this before, but somebody says, "Hey, let's pray for the food." It's all the adults, all of the kids, so many of us. And church people, it's all quiet.
Somebody's getting ready to pray, and our son says, "This food looks like poo." And I was like mortified. The pastor's kid, what? And so by the time he had had this whole attitude the whole time, he was fourteen, and when we got to the car. I got in the car. He was getting in the car, but I, I shouldered him into a snowbank, and he fell into the snowbank.
And then I locked all the locks on the car, and I wouldn't let him in. What does that have to do with him and his attitude? It was me and me caring about what his performance reflected on me, and I'm like, who cares what everybody thinks? All of our kids have things, we have things, and I feel like there's so many. I parented out of a brokenness for so long.
And I apologized so often to all of them and cried, and but I still like as a listener. I'm just saying, man, deal with your stuff that's inside. Maybe you don't even know what it is, but maybe God's showing you some of your pain points. I actually think, I mean, because I have the same type of stories. When you kind of get clear of that moment, and you look back and you go, "Man, I lost it.
I did this. That was inappropriate. Like I don't even know why I did." That is a little bit of a litmus test, right? Think of it as an assessment, and it's trying to shout to you, "Hey, Ron." You got something inside. You got to wrestle with.
There's something in there. You need to figure out what this thing is.
So for you, now that you're on this side of your identity, yeah, you can look back and you go, I can see how silly that was. What my child did is not a reflection of who I am, or my worth in the world, or how whether God loves me, or whether I'm a decent parent or not. But the other side of it, you couldn't see that at all. Same with me throwing the hammer. Like, wow!
Just because I'm not adequate to fix something doesn't mean I'm not a man. I'm not good. I'm not valuable. It's just that's not my skill set. Like, I now get that that I didn't get way back when my oldest son was three.
So. Allow those moments of dysregulation, of lack of control, of stupidity, to be of stupidity. Let's call it what it is. Allow those moments to show you something, to teach you, to to beg you to do the work, to understand that part of you.
Now, what do you do with the regret if it feels like it's clung to you, and you want to shake it off? You shared yours with Connor. I've got mine. We've all got them. You're asking, like, what's wrong with me?
Yeah, yeah. But I mean, at this point, so you're saying now it's you want to say, okay, I've got to let it go because help. I'm ruined. My kids. You didn't ruin your kids.
In some ways, they're better because of those moments. Yeah, and again, there are moments that you you do think that that left a mark, and you have to repent. And you have to. Absolutely. But if you're carrying it around like a weight, a burden.
At some point, that God wants to say, "You got to let go of it." Yes, it's decades ago. Yes, I want you free today. Help our parent do that, because there is some going I can't let go.
Okay. Let's say there are some things we're talking about here that involve sin. Yeah, and you really did hurt somebody, and you might need to go and ask for forgiveness. I don't care how long it's been. That might be the appropriate thing to do.
I think sometimes we ask for forgiveness and we still can't let go of the regret. We still beat ourselves up over that. Yeah.
Ultimately, I think we're still searching for something. Like I can just speak for me. For me, this whole thing of Adequacy adds up to how well I did today in this, this being a dad, and being a husband, and being an employee, and doing my work.
Somehow, that all added up to whether or not I was a person of worth and value. And until I finally understood that and realized what I was ultimately chasing, I couldn't let go of my regret.
Now I see it for what it is, and I go, "Wow!
Well, first of all, that's not how you earn worth. That comes from Jesus loving me and making me more than I am. And turns out, I don't have to be adequate. That was the most liberating thought I've ever had. I've been a Christian for I don't know 45 years of my life or something before I went, "Whoa!
Nothing says I have to be adequate." Nothing in Scripture demands that of me. Jesus is happy to embrace me as an inadequate person. This is the narrative of everybody in the Bible. Yeah, we're all broken.
So I guess I'm still loved. I guess I'm still a contributor to this world. I can bring light to darkness, and it's okay that I blew it.
Now there's residue from that moment of where I blew it. There's. A little bit of impact on my kids, and yeah, I can try to clean that up to whatever degree life allows me to. But the rest of it, I just got to release, since it really doesn't add up to anything of substance anyway.
Now that's what's been helpful for me. How somebody else wrestles with a regret—you know, they've they've got to they got to find their way through it. What you do, like. When Ron said release, I can picture you because you're so visual. Just going, yeah, letting that baby float up to the heavens like those lights.
I have to see myself handing it to Jesus. I see the regret in my hand, and I hand it to him. In my head, I picture handing it to him, and usually in my mind, because we use our imaginations all the time.
So why not use it for this? In my mind, I picture him getting rid of it. He's the one that allows it to float up or bury it or whatever, and. Then I can't re-dig it back up, you know, because it's easy to go back and say, like, oh, it's it can feel heavy again later, and so it's that constant surrender. Like I'm not going to dwell on that.
It's been forgiven. He's taken it. I'm going to live in freedom today. What about you? I was just thinking of a thing we used to teach college athletes about how to apply.
Your faith or your walk with God into competition. In other words, don't pray the Lord's prayer and go out there and play like idiots. Not not in terms of ability, but you know, bad attitudes and cursing. It's like. I want to take Jesus onto the court with me, onto the field with me, and so we would teach these.
We call the principles of athletic perfection by West Neal, and one of them was called focal point. And focal point was an Old Testament idea of the of the priests in the Old Testament have tassels on the the hem of their garment, and God said, "I I want you have those, so when you look at them, you you're reminded who you are, who I am, what you're doing." We get in these competitions, and we. As a team, decide.
Okay, we want to we want to be a witness and a light for Jesus in this public softball tournament. What's our focal point? And so our pitcher said, "You know, before every pitch, I'm just going to do this with the ball. Nobody will know what I'm doing. It's not going to be a showy thing, but I'm just going to hold it up for a second, and everybody in the field will look at it and just go, 'We're out here for Jesus.' Is what we're about.
So I think, in a sense, it's like find something visual. Yep. And what Wendell taught us back then is he said, 'Okay, what that focal point means is okay, nail to the cross, the error you just made.
Okay, I've just booted a ball, two runs scored. I was playing.'" That focal point go okay. It's over. Forget it. But he also said this: nail to the cross, the home run you just hit.
It's in the past too.
So you are not living off that. You are not so. And so it sounds like for a parent, it's like okay, I blew that moment. Obviously, if you can. Go to your son.
Go to your daughter. Say I'm sorry. I didn't mean to throw that hammer. I was out of control. You saw that.
Maybe he doesn't understand at three, and maybe he's thirteen. You go, hey, remember that? I want to bring that up again because I want to make sure whatever it is, say you're sorry. Probably most kids are pretty quick to forgive. They may not.
It may be a really deep wound, but makes that the first thing. Then the second thing is have some kind of visual. Maybe it's a cross hanging on your wall. I don't care. Maybe it's a mark on your hand.
I don't know what it is, but something. To go, okay. I'm going to nail that to the cross. It's dead and buried. Jesus died for that.
I'm not going to live in it anymore. It doesn't define me. Yes, it's a regret. I wish I could have done that one better, but I didn't. Then God's going to use it in some some way.
I think this is so amazing because what we're saying is. Return to righteousness. I blew it. I said something. I I was a bad influence.
Return to righteousness, and now I'm back to being a good influence. And I think there's something liberating about that. I used to talk about have the audacity to embrace grace. Yeah, act like God's grace actually adds up to something in your world, in your life, and the regrets that you have are sort of in the past because you're you're living out of that new identity again. And yes, sometimes we repent, ask for forgiveness.
All that stuff's got to happen with repair, but living out of the new helps us to feel settled in that peaceful self, rather than ruminating on something we blew and messed up and can't change ever. God's grace—we all need it. Nail it. Nail it to the cross. Nail it and go back to righteousness.
So, Ron, tell our listeners and viewers where they can find you. FamilyLifeBlended dot com is where the Blended Family Ministry lives. We'd love for people to come. We've got all kinds of resources for them: video, audio, live events. You name it, we've got it.
And Mindful Marriage is there. Yes, the Mindful Marriage is available in the Family Life store, and you can get our book, No Perfect Parent. We talk about all of this in that book. Oh yeah! In fact, the last chapter is called "Our Top Five Parenting Regrets," and I didn't even mention what I talked about today.
That wasn't even in there.
So there's others, but again, all that's at familylifetoday. dot com. Just click on the link in the show notes, and hopefully that'll help you. Family Life Today is a donor supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry. Fifty years of helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.
