When You Miss the Moment

As I sat with my youngest daughter at the NHL game on Saturday night, I got a text message from my dad. It was an update on my older daughter's soccer game. It said, "Score is 4-3. E scored 2 goals."

I thought he was kidding, not because my daughter isn't a good player, but she plays defense. She rarely makes it across the midfield mark in a game, much less gets close enough to score a goal. She's scored one goal all season. And the one week neither of her parents are there, she scores two goals and apparently has the game of her life.

While we had a great time in St. Louis with our youngest (you can read about it here), I was disappointed to have missed my older daughter's stellar performance. It feels like I missed a special moment. And I hate that.

As parents, sometimes, we miss those moments. Oh, not just the goals being scored or the big events, sometimes we miss the teachable moments. We look back at our day and think, "Wow, I missed a great opportunity." And a lot of times, we beat ourselves up for missing it.

I wish I could have been at my daughter's game. I wish she hadn't picked the one game all season that neither of us were there to have the best game she's ever had. I wish I had gotten to share that moment. But would I have given up the memories we were making with our other daughter to do so? Probably not.

I could sit here and wallow in disappointment that I missed her game. But you know what? There will be other soccer games. I will never be able to go back and capture this particular moment in her soccer life again, but there will be others. There will be tournaments to win and games where she's terrible. She might even have another two-goal game, and I will be there for most of those.

Just like there will be other teachable moments. If I miss one today, then I'll just have to look for one tomorrow. It's easy to beat ourselves up over a lost moment with our kids. Sometimes we think, "If I were a better parent, I would have dealt with that better" or "If only I hadn't been so busy, I could have captured that moment."

We all miss the moment sometimes. And it's OK. Recognize that you missed it, ask God to provide you with another teachable moment, and move on. No parent is perfect. We all screw up. We get mad when we should be calm. We chastise when we should teach. We focus on rules when we should be looking at our kids' hearts.

God knows we screw up, and He loves us anyway. He loves us so much, He's always willing to give us another chance to do better. When we screw up, we need to acknowledge it, ask for forgiveness (from God and our kids), and ask God for help to do a better job next time. When we ask God for forgiveness, He gives it and forgets about it. Psalm 103:12 says, "as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us." We're the ones that get stuck in remembering our failures, and it keeps us from moving on to the next moment.

Don't wallow in disappointment or compare yourself to another parent. God chose you to be the parent of your child. He's going to give you all the tools you need to do so. If you miss a teachable moment, He's going to give you another one. It won't be exactly the same as the first one, but you'll get another opportunity.

I won't get another shot to see the fantastic game my daughter played on Saturday. But I will see a lot more soccer games and a lot more goals. You might not get another shot at the teachable moment you let slide by yesterday, but you will see more teachable moments today. If you're not busy dwelling on what you've missed, you'll be ready when they come around.

    

Even the Professionals Fall Down

As most of you know, my youngest daughter plays ice hockey. She doesn't just play ice hockey, she's passionate about all things hockey. If there's a game on TV, we watch it. If there's a stick and a tennis ball available, we play it. If there's an opportunity to strap on skates, she takes it.

The Stanley Cup playoffs are going on right now. Just about every night for the past month, we've watched at least some part of a hockey game. This is the first year I've watched hockey on TV from the vantage point of being a hockey mom. I know a whole lot more about the game and about how hard it really is to play.

Those guys in the NHL make it look easy, but if you've ever watched a hockey game, you'll notice that even the guys in the NHL fall down sometimes. When you're chasing a small piece of frozen rubber while skating on a sheet of ice, even the professionals can fall down.

Did you know that one of the first things they teach kids in learn-to-skate classes is how to fall down and how to get back up? When you're learning to play hockey, it's inevitable that you will fall down. Knowing how to get back up puts you back in the game faster.

Life is a lot like a hockey game. I don't know anyone who doesn't fall down on occasion. We fail at something at which we really wanted to succeed. We make a mistake in dealing with our kids. We miss an opportunity that God gave us to share His love and compassion with someone.

Our kids fall down, too. They fight with their siblings. They say the wrong thing to a friend. They don't make the cut to make the team or the school play. They are disrespectful to mom and dad.

All of these scenarios lead to pain and disappointment in varying degrees. But, if we learn and we teach our kids how to get back up and get back in the game, we are much more useful to God than if we wallow in our mistakes and failures.

God doesn't remember our mistakes and failures. Psalm 103:12 says "as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us." And Paul reminds us not to dwell on our past mistakes in Philippians 3:13-14 when he says "But one thing I do: 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."

Getting back up and into the game isn't always easy. When you fall down hard, when you fail at something, it would be so much easier to just give up and walk away. But, God has a plan for your life and your children's lives, so it's important to know how to get back in the game and let God use you and what you've learned from your failures to help you fill your role in His plan.

In hockey, they teach kids to pull their knees up underneath them, and then put one knee up and push themselves to a standing position and go hard to get back in the game. That's a pretty good model for getting back up in life, too. Rarely do we just hop back up, straight to our feet. Teach your kids these steps for getting past failure. Equate it getting up when we fall down. You can't go from laying down straight to your feet, but you can take steps to get yourself upright again.

• Get to your knees: When you fail, pray and ask God to forgive any sin that may have played a role in your failure. Ask Him to show you how to go forward.
• Get one foot under you: Take a step toward getting back into the game of life. Take another stab at whatever knocked you down or go in a different direction.
• Push to a standing position: In hockey, many kids will use their stick to push themselves all the way to their feet. Consider God to be your hockey stick. Lean on His strength and guidance to show you how to go on in the face of failure. Let Him fill you up with the strength you need to face the day and to show you which way to go from here.
• Get your feet under you and go full speed: God's got a plan for your life. He wants you to get back in the game as quickly as possible. He needs your heart fully engaged with Him. Only when you are seeking Him -- spending time with Him and asking for His guidance -- can you go full speed ahead in the game of life.

Falling down is part of life. Knowing how to get back up after we fall gets us back in the game so God can use us.

Lessons I Learned from My Daughter's Hair

If you're like me, you woke up this morning to the news of a huge earthquake in Japan and a possible tsunami on the West Coast. Please take a moment to pray for those in Japan and those in the path of the tsunami. Everyday Truth has some regular readers in Japan. Pray for them as well. If you're one of those regular readers in Japan, give us a shout out to let us know how you're doing and how we can pray for you.

Some of you will face questions today from your kids about why God lets disasters like this happen. Check out this post on Explaining the Unexplainable for some tips on talking to your kids about tragedy.

My youngest got something in her hair yesterday. Now, that might not sound like a big deal, but my youngest has thick, corkscrew curly hair. To make matters worse, her hair is in desperate need of a haircut, which means it is at its thickest. Some mornings, it's tough to get a pick through it, much less a fine-toothed comb. Top that off with a tender-headed kid, and you can imagine how my afternoon went yesterday. By the time we got done, she was in tears and I was frustrated.

After everyone was in bed last night, I started thinking about how sin is a lot like the stuff my youngest got in her hair. It gets stuck in our lives, and sometimes it's really hard to get out. Once Satan gets a foothold in our lives through sin, he doesn't want to let go easily. And unlike the nasty stuff in my daughter's hair, sin can masquerade as something nice. It can be enjoyable and tempting. In the end, though, it will lead us to the same result I experienced yesterday -- frustration and sadness.

The other thing about sin is that it rarely stays in just one area of our lives. Once it gets its claws into one area of our lives, it wants to spread to other areas. And then it's even harder to get rid of. The only way to get rid of it is to turn it over to God, and let Him work on it. Psalm 103:12 tells us "as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us." But, we have to ask God to forgive us for our sin and to help us stop sinning. 1 John 1:9 promises "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness."

Help your kids understand what sin looks like in their lives and how it can spread if we don't confess it to God.

• Give your kids a coffee filter or a napkin. Drip some water with red food coloring in it on the coffee filter or napkin. Watch the stain spread. Talk with your kids about how sin is like that water on the coffee filter. It starts as a little spot, but if we don't get rid of it by confessing it to God and asking for His forgiveness, it can start to take over our lives, just like the red water spread across the napkin.
• Take a square of fabric or an old T-shirt and use a permanent black marker to draw on it. Then ask your kids to get the stain out. Give them some soap and stain remover and have them scrub the stain. Talk about how it's impossible to get the stain out ourselves. Sin is like that. We can't get rid of our sin without God's help. When we repent and confess our sins to God, He removes them and forgets about them.
• Read Psalm 103:12 with your kids. Get out a map of the United States, show your kids how far it is from the West Coast to the East Coast. Talk about how God separates our sin from us even farther than that because east and west will never meet; they just continue on into space. Ask your kids how that makes them feel to know that God forgives us and doesn't hold our wrong actions and thoughts against us.

Sin keeps us from getting close to God, just like the stuff in my daughter's hair kept the comb from going through it easily. But God has a simple remedy for the sin that gets stuck in our lives. Repent and confess it to Him, then stop doing it. Ask God to show you where sin is stuck your life. Then ask Him for forgiveness and the strength not to repeat it. Don't let sin keep you from enjoying the abundant life that Jesus promised.

God Who Sees (Memory Monday)

Each day in November, the Everyday Truth blog is looking at a different name for God and providing a family devotional for you to use with your kids. The goal is to keep our hearts focused on giving thanks to God during the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving.


Can you imagine what it would be like to be blind? You would never know what anyone looked like. You wouldn't be able to see with your eyes the beauty of the world God created. You would have to rely on other people to be your eyes for you.

Sometimes we act like God is blind. But He isn't. The Bible tells us in Genesis 16:13 that God is the God who sees. A woman named Hagar was running away from her problems. She was ready to die in the desert, but God spoke to her. When He was done speaking, Hagar said "'You are the God who sees me,' for she said, 'I have now seen the One who sees me.'"

Sometimes when we do something that we know is wrong, we try to hide it -- from our parents, our teachers and even God. When you stop and think about, that's silly. God sees everything. We're not hiding anything from Him. All we're doing is not allowing God the opportunity to forgive us for the wrong things we've done.

The Bible tells us in 1 John 1:9 that "When we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." So, even though God can see everything, He waits for us to show Him our sins, so that He can wipe them away. Memorize this verse this week to remind you that God is waiting for you to confess your sins to Him, so He can take them away.

Grab a white board and a dry erase marker. Write down something that you have done wrong recently. Now, take the eraser and wipe it away. That's what God does when we confess our sins to Him. He wipes the white board clean. Psalm 103:12 tells us that God separates us from our sin "as far as the East is from the West." That's about as far away as you can get.

But God doesn't just see our sin. He sees us as the wonderful creation that He made. He knows the number of hairs on your head. Sometimes we pretend to be different than we are so we can fit in with a certain group of people, but God sees us for who we really are. And, you know what? He loves you for exactly who you are. He doesn't want you to be anyone other than the person He made you to be.
Be thankful today that God can see the real you. On your thankfulness leaves today, write down things that you are thankful that God can see about you. Are you thankful that He knows the number of hairs on your head? Maybe you're thankful that He knows about the trouble that you're having with a friend at school.
 
Pray together and thank God for being a God who sees. Thank Him that He is willing to wipe the white board clean of our sins. Thank Him for seeing you for the wonderful creation that you are.