04/17/2024
This verse has impacted me in many ways over the years. When I was young, this verse caused me to try not to act foolishly or make big mistakes because I didn't want to disappoint my parents. I believed my mistakes caused my parents to be very disappointed in me and feel grief and bitterness. But later in life, I realized that is not what my parents were actually feeling about my foolishness.
As I got older, God gave me a much different insight into this verse. Now that I am a parent, I realize that my parenting grief does not come from disappointment in my child because of their foolish choices. My grief comes from my feeling that I failed my children by not instructing them well enough to avoid that foolish choice. Instead of anger or disappointment in them, I try to be patient, understanding, and console them about what has happened, and then later give them the guidance that I obviously forgot to give them in the past. (Please note that I wrote "I try to." I still make mistakes because I am very much a work in progress myself.)
