• Home
  • About Us
  • Resources
  • Authors
  • Write for Us
  • Forward Movement

Grow Christians

A community of disciples practicing faith at home

  • Parenting
  • Discipleship
  • Liturgical Year
  • Prayer
  • Archives
    • Seasons of the Year
      • Advent through Epiphany
      • Ash Wednesday, Lent & Holy Week
      • Easter & Pentecost
      • Ordinary Time
    • Seasons of Life
      • Childhood Years
      • Teen & Young Adult Years
      • Grandparenting & Godparenting
    • Saints and Feasts
      • Saints
      • Feasts
    • Discipleship
    • Making Faith Visible
    • Special Series
    • Grow Christians Updates & Giveaways
  • The Good Book Club
  • Holy Day Resources

What if God Doesn’t Want “the Best” for Your Child?

January 15, 2019 By Meredith Baker 7 Comments

Sitting around the breakfast table last year, I read through the story of the Annunciation with my children. We paused at the illustration and took in the details. Dirt floor. No windows. I asked, “Does this look like a poor person’s house or a rich person’s house?” My three-year-old bluntly observed, “That doesn’t look nice at all.” Right. The same went for Jesus’ birthplace in Bethlehem, which even though it was not a stable, was certainly nothing fancy. 

According to the gospel of Matthew, Mary and Joseph sought asylum from Herod’s cruel decree in Egypt, taking him on a dangerous journey under conditions which the American Academy of Pediatrics would never advise. After returning to Israel, his parents raised him in Nazareth, an insignificant village in an area known for violent state crackdowns on insurrectionists. Mary and Joseph were special, but they lost their kid in a big city at least once. The biblical record seems to indicate God didn’t provide a stable childhood, perfect parents, or a safe neighborhood for his own child’s upbringing. To us, it doesn’t look like the best situation. 

Meanwhile, in the middle-class America many of us inhabit, parents are tying themselves in knots to secure “the best” for their kids. Perhaps it’s museum passes, Mandarin tutors, a home in the right school district, travel sports, or general overscheduling. Sociologist Annette Lareau refers to this style of parenting as “Concerted Cultivation,” a deliberate attempt to provide every advantage. While giving kids “the best” in this way sets them up for potential academic and vocational success, it also opens them to materialism, performance anxiety, and depression. 

So let’s pause and reflect on Jesus’ childhood.

An exhausted Joseph and Mary with toddler Jesus

What if it gives us the freedom to reject “the best” and think about what’s really best for our children’s spiritual and emotional growth? That might mean renouncing comfort and being open to more — not less — risk. It might mean taking a step back to allow for more unstructured time. It might mean giving children more responsibilities around the home. It might mean turning down admission to a selective college. If God didn’t choose what looked like “the best” for his son, it frees us to follow his guidance even when others may question our decisions.

Parents wrestling with choices like these will find a friendly fellow pilgrim in Shannan Martin, author of the thoughtful, moving, and humorous book Falling Free: Rescued from the Life I Always Wanted. Feeling that God was calling her family to something new, the author moved from a comfortable, Pinterest-worthy life in the country to a small house in a run-down Rust Belt city. Her husband took a job as a prison chaplain. They brought a young man with a difficult past into their home. They joined an aging church and enrolled their children in the local (low-ranked) public school. And what the family discovered in this free-fall was joy. Gratitude. Community. Purpose. And, as Martin writes, “the gift of knowing for sure that our identity needn’t hinge on what the world values.” 

This new year, let’s feel the freedom for our families to fail, to be ordinary, to march to a different drum, and to be used by God.

[Image Credit: Holy Family by Claude Mellan, property of the Public Domain via Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1953.]

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Email
  • Pinterest
  • More
  • Pocket
  • Reddit
  • LinkedIn
  • Skype
  • Print

Related

Filed Under: Parenting Tagged With: failure, freedom, Holy Family, Jesus, overwhelm, parenting

About Meredith Baker

Meredith Baker is an educator, an award-winning historian, and the mother of three young children. She has been a church pianist for two decades and believes that music has incredible potential to strengthen faith. Meredith recently moved from Capitol Hill to Richmond with her family.

Comments

  1. Emily E says

    January 15, 2019 at 11:23 am

    Yes! Thank you for this article.

    Reply
  2. Wendy says

    January 15, 2019 at 6:11 pm

    Amen! Thank you.

    Reply
  3. Mary Lee Wile says

    January 15, 2019 at 8:52 pm

    So true — and so hard! One wants the world for one’s children (and grandchildren…), but Jesus said, “I am not of this world.”

    Reply
  4. Melissa Parkhurst says

    January 16, 2019 at 4:48 am

    Thank you for this vital reminder.
    It’s an invitation for me to step back and re-assess what’s important.

    Reply
  5. Lisa M. Nickerson says

    January 17, 2019 at 2:10 pm

    A perennial issue for families in our neighborhood. Of course we want the best for our children; the problem is determining what is the best. Is it true that if my child doesn’t get admitted to Sidwell Friends School (Chelsea Clinton and the Obama daughters’ premier private school) in pre-k, he or she will never get into Harvard? Does what is “best” equate with what is most expensive? Is a public school “best” for teaching children about tolerance and appreciation for diverse economic and social backgrounds? These are troubling questions for many parents. Thanks to Meredith for her insightful religious perspective on the issue. It reminds us to ask ourselves “What would Jesus say?”

    Reply
  6. Barb Frahm says

    January 17, 2019 at 6:12 pm

    So true! Excellent!

    Reply
  7. Elizabeth A. Hardin says

    January 29, 2019 at 2:09 pm

    I often ask “What happens if what’s ‘best’ for your child, is not ‘best’ for your child?” The difference lies between immediate, future, and eternal; between Kingdom values and cultural values. Even if one recognizes eternal Kingdom values, it’s quite difficult to fight the commercial images that a family sees thousands of times daily. It require disciplined, faithful thought and action.

    Reply

Leave a Reply to Melissa Parkhurst Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Encouragement in your Inbox

Enter your email address to receive notifications of new posts.

Join 4,329 other subscribers

The Spy Series

Grow Christians is brought to you by Forward Movement, a ministry of The Episcopal Church that seeks to inspire disciples and empower evangelists. Follow on Facebook or Twitter.

Search:

Like us on Facebook

Like us on Facebook

Recent Posts

Popular Posts

  • Celebrating the Conversion of a Man So Sure About Everything
  • That moment you realize the voice you’re hearing isn’t God – it’s Satan
  • A bright teen asked me to explain the Trinity. Here's what I said.
  • Labyrinths as formation: Making finger sand labyrinths
  • The disciples cast lots to select St. Matthias. My kids do too.

Copyright © 2021 — Forward Movement • All rights reserved.

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.