A Prayer for Parents

I wanted to share a prayer with you that has been dear to my heart over the last few weeks. I actually keep it posted in my planner and I carry it around in my purse, because it seems as though I have to refer to it quite often, especially when I start to feel like a failure as a parent. I don't know about you, but often I beat myself up over how I continually mess up as a parent. Sometimes it seems as though we are swimming upstream when it comes to parenting our kids in today's culture. I am realizing how I need to stay on my knees in prayer and rely on God.

As I was reading Focus on the Family Magazine the other day, I came across this article. It was taken from the "Complete Marriage and Family Home Reference Guide" by Dr. James Dobson.

There's hardly a parent alive who does not have some regrets and painful memories of their failures as a mother or a father. Children are infinitely complex, and we can no more be perfect parents than we can be perfect human beings. The pressures of living are often enormous.

We get tired and irritated; we are influenced by our physical bodies and our emotions, which sometimes prevent us from saying the right things and being the models we should be. We don't always handle our children as unemotionally as we wish we had, and it's common to look back a year or two later and see how wrong we were in the way we approached a problem.

All of us experience these failures! No one does the job perfectly! That's why each of us should get alone with God and say:

Lord, You know my inadequacies. You know my weaknesses, not only in parenting, but also in every area of my life. I did the best I could, but it wasn't good enough. As You broke the fishes and the loaves to feed the 5,000, now take my meager effort and use it to bless my family. Make up for the things I did wrong. Satisfy the needs that I have not satisfied. Wrap Your great arms around my children, and draw them close to You. And be there when they stand at the great crossroads between right and wrong. All I can give is my best, and I've done that. Therefore, I submit to You my children and myself and the job I did as a parent. The outcome now belongs to You.

I know the Father will honor that prayer, even for parents whose job is finished. The Lord does not want you to suffer from guilt over events you can no longer influence. The past is the past. Let it die, never to be resurrected. Give the situation to God, and let Him have it. I think you'll be surprised to learn that you're no longer alone!

"Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus" (Phillipians 3:13-14).