It’s Only Hard for Good Parents

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MW Editor’s Note: Mentoring Warriors welcomes back Justin Wells to the tribe. He is the owner and craftsman behind Hammer and Spear Knives. Follow this link hsknives .Justin is a twenty-something warrior raising a young family in Missouri. He shares insights every dad needs to know about raising kids. This is a repost of his article on Substack. Welcome back Justin!

It’s Only Hard for Good Parents

I’ve heard that over and over again. It has felt good to let those very words wash over me and affirm that all my effort has meaning, but I’ll be honest—the longer I sit with it, the more I seriously question the truth of that statement.

Words are powerful. They can steward emotion in the same way music can. You don’t want to work out, but if I started playing the theme song for “Rocky,” I bet somewhere in your heart you’d feel a great desire to run up the nearest stairs or purchase a side of beef to practice your right hook.

In the same way, words have incredible power to shape how we think, but they can also shape how we think about ourselves. We must guard our inputs. Normally Satan doesn’t use a blatant lie to lead humans toward corruption, at least not at first. The examples that Scripture provides show us that one of his favorite strategies is to mix a lie with the truth. When Satan tempts Jesus, he even goes so far as to quote Scripture. Be very careful of those who manipulate words.

Social media is a master class in the dark art of manipulation, using words and music and imagery to steward emotion. Out of this beast that feeds on engagement has come many “great” teachers. You can’t actually see the fruit of their lives, but they “appear” to have found the path. If you need more than algorithm-approved ten seconds of advice, you can always have as much teaching as you want—for $15.99 a month.

Manipulation feeds on the bones of desire for everything to be okay.

“It’s only hard for good parents.”

Humans crave validation, and believe me when I tell you that social media understands that it’s easier to catch flies with honey instead of vinegar. I suspect both good and bad parents would say that raising kids is pretty hard, but what I really think differentiates the two is their perspective and willingness to sacrifice.

For one, the hardship stems from giving everything you’ve got to these children and having some pretty serious questions about whether it will actually be enough. On the other end of the spectrum, even though it goes unspoken, their children are in the way of how they want to live and what they want to do.

The nature of having little humans is that they are going to need you. The level to which you are willing to be selfless with them will largely determine the quality of the relationship.

I am not a victim of my children. That’s a wild statement, but bear with me. My life is not diminished by the constraint of having my daughter. We can’t stay out of the house for long or it really throws her whole system out of whack. We could push through and continue to struggle with a full schedule and a very fussy baby, or we could recognize that this season won’t last forever and modify our lives for a short period while Penelope is learning to process our world.

One option tramples over the needs of these children while the other quietly attends to them. I suspect if you asked both parents about their experience of raising children within those options, they’d say that it has been hard.

This has been tough for me to write about because I am only three months into being a father. Who am I to cast judgment on who is a good or bad parent? I suppose my point is this: all the good things in life require a difficult process to achieve them, but sometimes the difficulty we face is not the signal that we are doing things right, but instead that we are being selfish.

“It’s only hard for good parents.”

We have to guard our inputs. False validation can really fuel us in the opposite direction that we want to go. We are going to need the Holy Spirit’s help to interpret the difficulty we face. We are either pushing toward the holiness Christ desires to see in us, or simply experiencing hardship as the natural consequences of the way we live. It’s so hard to discern where I stand as a parent, and I suspect that I could fall on either end of that spectrum on any given week. This is why it becomes so vital for me as a parent to stay connected to Jesus. It’s getting harder and harder to discern what is true and who the wolves in sheep’s clothing are. Your proximity to the Holy Spirit, the Holy Scriptures, and the God who breathed both will be the only lighthouse that can guide us through the wind and the waves.

May I never write beyond that which I have lived.

Warrior On!

MW Editor’s Note. Mentoring Warriors first met Justin through a story about Justin’s Hammer and Spear Knives that was featured in an And Sons Magazine article. You can find Justin crafting another round of knives as he also sharpens how he leads his family. Hammer and Spear Knives