“But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.”
Romans 5:8 (NLT)
Don’t bother. My complex kid is NEVER going to learn how to sit still, not wander off, wait patiently for her turn, or not interrupt. Don’t bother. His disability will hold him back, and he’ll never succeed.
WRONG!
This type of thinking is tempting during the worst of my worry. When I’m fretting over my AuDHD preteen’s present and future, I wonder if I’m just setting her up for failure by my rules and expectations. I find myself doubting her potential. And yes, she has limits. But we all have room to grow. And God sent his son when we were hopeless. And still, even with Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, not everyone believes. And we all STILL fall short and sin.
Even us Christians!
So, when my daughter ends up breaking down a chicken coop’s small door in a desperate (unthinking) attempt to “save” a robin that’s flown in through a crack after years of being told to stay away from the coop—in fact, we’ve sealed the small doors and put a lock on the big one to keep her out—I ask myself why we even bothered to put up all the preventative measures.
It was another what-on-earth moment. Again, I couldn’t have predicted this behavior with a crystal ball. There were consequences of course:
- Help her Godfather fix what she broke, which involved learning to use a screwdriver.
- This was a double lesson from God because having to use the screwdriver was similar to my daughter making a much younger friend go down a scary pool slide when the girl didn’t want to. Sometimes the only way for my autistic daughter to have true empathy is to experience the same thing firsthand.
- Use her own money to buy the paint.
- Paint the new board to match the rest of the coop.
- This was the “funnest” part, except I told her not to be creative and “just paint,” which dampened the enjoyment of painting. I mean, it was a chore, not an artistic project.
But let’s look in the mirror. How many times has the Holy Spirit or God’s Word taught us right from wrong, and we still selfishly decide to do what we want to. At least my daughter thought she was rescuing a bird. I’ve done far worse things with no such pure motivation.
God calls us to be his Holy priesthood, but we continue to reach for the tree of good and bad. That’s why God sent his son. We don’t deserve Jesus. We don’t deserve our Heavenly Father’s loving discipline. However, he promised never to leave us or forsake us. God doesn’t look at us, shake his head and say, “don’t bother.”
So, yes! Bother to put rules in place. Bother to discipline when the rules are broken. Bother—because to not bother is to give up, and we NEVER give up on our kids.
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