We can ask ourselves, are we parenting from a place of abundant love or the fear of not enough?
There’s a message echoing off the walls of our culture and it has seeped into our families. By the time our kids are teens the message is loud and clear—maximize! Make the most of every opportunity: Carpe Diem, FOMO, go hard or go home, enjoy every moment, or YOLO! Usually, the sentiment is well-intended, but our adoption of its underlying fear impacts our parenting.
The fear says that if we don’t maximize every opportunity our kids will miss out and future opportunities will be jeopardized. We tell them to take all the honors courses available! Go to every training and practice offered! Volunteer so you can add it to your college application! We’d rather our families be over-committed and over-scheduled than risk missing out on a potential opportunity.
We have become maximizers of our kids’ lives and they feel the pressure. Maximizing is the face of a scarcity mentality. However, if we peel back the layers of scarcity mentality, we find an old, familiar sin named pride. God knows about our pride struggles all too well. Eve’s scarcity mentality led her to take a bite of forbidden fruit. David’s led to an affair and murder. Peter’s led him to deny Jesus. Judas’ led him to betray Jesus. Where is yours leading you?
In Christ, our fear of not being enough, of not having enough, is exchanged for abundant love. There’s no limit to God’s love and grace in our lives. We can rely on God for our kids’ abundant life instead of our best attempt at maximizing. We can ask ourselves, are we parenting from a place of abundant love or the fear of not enough?
1 John 4:18 says, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” Let’s fill our hearts and homes with the maximized, abundant, perfect love of Jesus which says, “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us.” (Ephesians 3:20)
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