Love: Making Generous Room for Our Kids’ Mistakes
“There is never any room for error with you.” The admission came with a small sob.
One of my children had stormed upstairs after dinner, bellowing, “This is why I never want to talk at the dinner table! Because I can’t ever disagree with you!” I followed a few minutes later, finding a figure on the bathroom floor, leaning against the cabinet, red-faced and crying.
Until that small explosion, it had been an ordinary evening: dinner, (complaining about dinner), then a few pages of discussion of a book my husband read aloud to the family. When this particular child had ventured a (brow-raising) opinion, we’d pounced. A small soapbox ensued, likely denouncing TikTok and other time-wasting evils.
The correction was well-meant. But I heard something true—something hard—about our parenting that night, from a crying child cross-legged on the bathroom floor.
We haven’t always loved our children well.
What is love?
When my five children were younger, discipline and correction were routine parts of our everyday. There were sibling fights, sullen attitudes, stormy tantrums. An important foundation was laid for teaching our children to understand our authority and their obligation to obey—under God. In many ways, I understood well my obligation to correct my children. Still, I didn’t always understand how to do that in love. I’m still learning.
Love, as we understand from the Bible, is the essence of God’s character. God isn’t simply loving. He is love. This isn’t an “improved,” New Testament version of God. No, this is the God whom Moses meets on the summit of Mount Sinai, after his people have committed rebellion against him by worshipping the golden calf. God does not destroy his people, as he has every right to do. Instead, he reveals his goodness to Moses, calling out his name to Moses as “the LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Ex. 34:6). To see God’s people at their worst is to see God’s love most clearly.
This list of divine attributes tells us what kind of parent God is like, especially when sin has been committed and correction is required. According to his self-revelation to Moses, God stands ready to forgive and receive all who return to him. He is poised to show unexpected, undeserved favor. He is patient and forbearing with the faults of his people. He is full of steadfast love and devoted kindness. He is true and faithful, reliable in all his promises.
To see this list, from Exodus 34:6, is to realize the true offense of God’s love, as Jonah railed against it when God relented from the punishment he had promised to inflict against the wicked city of Nineveh.[1] In love, God turns from justly deserved anger and gives compassion instead.[2] To many like Jonah, God’s love will seem entirely unfair. God doesn’t mete out an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. God inclines himself toward mercy with his wayward children.[3]
Merciful love is, of course, the good news of the gospel. We know the ultimate expression of God’s steadfast love was demonstrated at the cross of Jesus Christ, where God himself died for sinners. “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Love, as Jesus demonstrated, is an extravagant, selfless act.
How do I love my children?
When my children were younger, I did not grant much lenience for mistakes and misdeeds. (There is a reason I am rightly accused today of having “no room for error.”) I suppose I worried that if I weren’t ruthless in my correction, they would make it a habit to turn from God. Maybe I worried, too, that other mothers would judge me for my laxity.
On the one hand, it’s an entirely loving desire to want for our children’s holiness. This is a quality of God’s own parenting, “For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives” (Heb. 12:6). God’s love isn’t lenient in the manner of excusing sin or of minimizing its consequences, both earthly and eternal. To love our children is to help them connect the dots between sin and death.
And yet, the qualities of God’s love suggest that we should be more patient, more generous, more forgiving, more merciful with our children than their actions ever merit. Our children will sin—and their sin should find us broken-hearted, not angry. Love asks us to persist in believing the best of our children and bearing with their childish ways.[4] This isn’t to say we abolish rules and expectations. But it is to say that we let go of our need to shame our children. Rather, in their sin, we scoop them up and say, “It’s true you did something that is wrong, that it hurt God and me and yourself. But love is not something undone. On the cross, it’s the fiercest knot God ever tied.”
I know it’s been hard for me to love my children like this because I’ve struggled to see how God mercifully, patiently, and prodigally loves me. I think I must perform for God’s love, that I must tap-dance for his notice. Only in my recent years of my spiritual life have I begun to grasp such unsearchable truths as this one from the Psalms: “He knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust” (Ps. 103:14). God has patience for me to get things wrong—again and again and again.
If God’s love can make such generous room for mistakes, even for sin, a mother’s love might make the same generous room. It might, in fact, be the generosity we find ourselves needing when they’ve grown tall and accusing: There’s never any room for error with you.”
“You’re right,” I admitted. “I’m sorry for that, and I’m asking for God’s help to grow.”
[1] Jonah 4:2
[2] Hosea 11:1–9
[3] For a wonderful book-length meditation on God’s mercy, I highly recommend Dane Ortlund’s Gentle and Lowly.
[4] 1 Corinthians 13
R|M Apply Questions
Why is understanding God’s love foundational for us as mothers?
Is there a moment where you regret not having shown God’s patient, merciful love to your children? Have you received God’s forgiving love for you in this?
What other biblical verses/passages inform your understanding of God’s love—and a mother’s love—from God’s perspective?
What new insight about God’s love has the most impact on your parenting today?
