One of the things I love about the Family Faith Builders ministry is meeting new people and seeing all the cool ways God is using them to help families in their church and community!
I want to introduce you to Katie Robinson! She is the Parent Resource Coordinator for Family Ministries at Port City Community Church in Wilmington, NC. She loves helping families make Jesus a normal and natural part of their everyday life. And she’s also an author! She is writing a collection of books called “Walking Together.” And so far she’s got 2 books in this collection! I have read the first book (The Fourth Grade Plan) and really loved it! I have the second one (The Unexpected Summer) and plan to read it soon! These books really help open up conversations for parents and kids to have together. I encourage you to check out the Walking Together website to learn more about these books.
Katie has written this guest post on our site and I know this will be helpful for parents and children’s ministry leaders!
Three Reasons Parents Should Embrace the Hard
I learned about our next-door neighbor’s cancer diagnosis just after we moved in. The gentleman quickly adopted our kids as his own and in turn, our kids grew to love spending time with him. He had a massive garden, and being early into retirement, he seemed to have all the time in the world to happily include them in whatever project he was working on. As he moved towards the end of life and our family continually prayed for him, I knew we needed to prepare our kids for what was to come, but how? What words should we say? What would be helpful? Were they old enough to really understand?
During that same span of time a close family friend was going through a divorce. One spouse was no longer around, and our kids noticed and certainly had questions. How do you talk to a four-year-old about divorce? How do you convey the importance of marriage without passing judgment on divorce?
These topics of cancer and grief and divorce are not uncommon and yet as a parent, I struggled to find the right words and questioned what I was sharing. I often felt the need to explain everything yet wrestled to convey things in an age-appropriate manner.
So, what do we do? Several years later, I am more convinced than ever, that we have to lean in. We must embrace the hard rather than avoid or shield our kids from it. Here are three reasons why…
- Because the conversations aren’t going to stop. As my kids have grown, I’ve come to realize how much harder and deeper these conversations get. But at the same time, how much richer and more beautiful they get. It is inevitable that our kids will experience hardships and avoiding a conversation will only hurt in the long run.
- Because the earlier we enter in, the more influence we have. As parents we know that independence is always increasing for our kids and simultaneously, our control is constantly decreasing as they grow. It is far more helpful to enter in while our kids still want our opinion than to turn a blind eye and pretend it isn’t happening. They need to learn healthy coping skills and they need to see that experiencing hard things is a part of this broken world. They also need to see that there is beauty in processing through those things together.
- Because they need a true understanding of what God promises and what it means for Him to be good. Our culture loves feel-good sayings, but many of them do not point to Truth. God doesn’t always heal the hurting. Everything doesn’t always work out the way we want. Things are, more often than we want to accept, unfair. When we enter these conversations without the pressure to have a neat and clean answer, we allow space for hard emotions to exist while simultaneously pointing to hope as we navigate uncertainty.
It is a fact that we all have things we want to protect our kids from. We want to shield them from harsh realities that seem to exist and shelter them from potential hardships. I think the intentions are good, even really good, but in doing so, we may be providing a false hope that rests on unstable footing.
Jesus told us that in this world we will have trouble. Our kids will experience hard things. We will bump into things that we don’t have answers for and things we would rather avoid. But Jesus doesn’t tell us to run, He tells us to take heart because in Him we find peace, in Him there is hope, and together, we can remind each other of His goodness when our circumstances make it hard to see.
Here’s a little more about Katie…
Hi! I’m Katie and I live on the coast of North Carolina with my husband and three kiddos. I love the beach, I love games, and I love quality time with the people in our community. I work at our local church, Port City Community Church, where I get to help families make Jesus a normal and natural part of their everyday life (best job ever!)
There is nothing greater than spending time with my family, and at the same time, parenting is by far the hardest title I’ve ever held. I deeply wish I could protect our kids in a perfect bubble, but I know that isn’t reality, and I know God has called us as parents to so much more. I certainly don’t have all the answers, but I’ve also learned that God is okay with that. He doesn’t expect perfection- He simply asks us to enter in and trust His faithfulness.
If you ever want to connect, simply email katie.robinson@portcitychurch.org.