Parenting is Relationship

When Emily was 2 months old, we went to visit a friend in College Station who was a Christian counselor. Being new parents, we were very concerned about raising Emily in a godly way and we wanted to be faithful both to God and to her. After talking with our Christian counselor friend, he said something that has had a great influence on us and how we parent. He said, "It's all relationship."

It took me awhile to absorb those words. At first, I couldn't figure out what they meant. Here's a bit of what I have come to understand over the years.

We were created for relationship. God created us to be in perfect relationship with Himself. Of course, that got all boogered up when Eve and Adam sinned in the garden. But still we were created for relationship with God.

Relationship with us is so important to God that He did something unthinkable. He gave the life of His perfectly loving, pure, selfless, and only Son, with whom He had enjoyed perfect relationship for all eternity, just to restore relationship with people like you and me. Jesus is the only offering weighty enough to pay for the cumulative sin of mankind and therefore restore us to relationship with Him.

Relationship is a pretty big deal - both to God and to us. God desires it. We are created in His image - we need it.

The relationship we model to, for, and with our children is a picture of relationship with God and parenting is relationship. It's important to keep relationship with our children intact and intimate. Kids need to know that they are loved and belong to us. It's a picture of the great lengths God went to to restore us to relationship with Him.

All that being said, relationship is the glue in our lives. Whenever we've gone through difficult times, it is what has carried us through turbulent waters of parenting to the other side.

We are created by God, in His image, for relationship.