Podcast: Good News for Parents Filled with Regret, Guilt, or Shame (Adam Griffin)

August 18, 2025 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

The Relief Parents Long For

In this podcast pastor and author Adam Griffin talks about how and why parents might experience shame and how to instead draw closer to the Lord and exercise the fruit of the Spirit in their lives. Adam offers encouragement to expectant parents, parents in the thick of it, and parents with adult kids.

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Good News for Parents

Good News for Parents

Adam Griffin

This book provides parents with a gospel-centered perspective to navigate the challenges of parenting. With this hope, they can embrace their role with peace and confidence, trusting that Jesus is renewing both them and their children day by day. 

Topics Addressed in This Interview:

00:54 - A How-God Book, Not a How-To Book

Matt Tully
Adam Griffin serves as the lead pastor of Eastside Community Church in Dallas, Texas, is the host of The Family Discipleship Podcast, and is the author of numerous books for parents and children alike, including Good News for Parents: How God Can Restore Our Joy and Relieve Our Burdens. Adam, thanks so much for joining me today on The Crossway Podcast.

Adam Griffin
Matt, it’s an honor to be here. Thanks for having me.

Matt Tully
Today we’re going to talk about your new book on parenting, and it’s a book that probably is pretty different from most of the parenting books that maybe our listeners have read before, even Christian parenting books that we’ve read. But before we get into that and explain why that is and what makes it unique, I wonder if you can just start by telling us a little bit about yourself and your family.

Adam Griffin
Sure. I’m a parent as well. I’ve got three boys: Oscar, Gus, and Theodore. They’re 13, 11, and 9 right now. I’m married to Chelsea. She is a labor and delivery nurse in Dallas where we live. And I pastor a church, like you mentioned, at Eastside, and our family has lived in the same house for ten years. It’s the same neighborhood since before we planted. We are rooted where we’re at in Dallas, and I just love my kids. I love my family. I am no expert parent. Nothing that we do for parents is really rooted in the tips and tricks that I’ve learned, which is why the books that we’ve written are about discipleship and about sharing our faith, which we do at home imperfectly, and a book like this that we’re going to talk about today, which is more about how can I think about my imperfect parenting in a way that’s not going to absolutely torture me? And so that I can write about, because I live that life every day, which is making mistakes and trying to remember, In Christ, how can I think about this in a way that’s going to set me free instead of torment me?

Matt Tully
I’m sure most of us listening, most of the parents listening, we can often feel like we’re kind of just figuring it out. We’re barely making it through the day sometimes. And so the thought of writing a parenting book feels so far out of reach. So, when did you have this moment of realizing, I think I want to put pen to paper. I think I can help other parents even though I’m still in the thick of it?

Adam Griffin
Yeah, that’s a good question. I love to write and I have always loved discipleship. When I was a student minister, when I was single, I was discipling young men. As I became a parent, obviously I’m discipling my own kids. I’m also discipling people in our church, so it was a heart for discipleship and then an invitation professionally, where I was working in Next Gen and family ministry, to start writing and thinking about that. What scares me, and maybe other parents will relate to this, is if you put out a book on parenting, one day your kids might read that, one day your kids might see that, and one day your kids might resent that. They might say, “Hey, you put this in a book, but I didn’t see this in your life.” And so I try to write in a way that is completely free from any hypocrisy. So, I have a heart to help people and pastor people. I do that all the time. And I have a way in my heart that I see this writing as serving my kids, as helping me think through how can I be the kind of dad I want to be for my children, and how can I make sure that everything I’m writing is really honest? As much as I like writing about many different things, this is the slice of the pie the Lord gave me, and I never want my kids to feel like they are further under the microscope than they should be, whether they are because I’m a lead pastor of a church or because I’m an author of a book or because I speak about parenting. And at the same time, I understand that comes with it a little bit, and we try to talk through that. So, it started from passion—what do I care about? And then it also came from pastoring—what do I see in people? I see in parents maybe a lackadaisical approach to discipleship that I want to see them overcome. And I see in them a torment of themselves over what mistakes they’re making, and I want to see them, in their union with Christ, set free from that.

Matt Tully
And your first book with Crossway that you coauthor with Matt Chandler, Family Discipleship, is really addressing that first part, trying to help parents be a little bit more intentional about how they are shepherding their kids, shepherding them towards the Lord. And now this new book is really trying to address that second part, the struggle that we can feel as parents, the shame, the regret, the insufficiency that we often feel as parents. And you help us see how the gospel comes to bear on that. And you talk about this book not being a how-to book on parenting, which is so often what the genre is marked by. It’s usually asking, How do I discipline my kids? How do I help my kids do this or that? But really, this is a how-God book. That’s your language, “how-God.” Help us understand what you mean by that. Why is it a how-God book?

Adam Griffin
That’s a good question. Most parenting books that are out there are going to be, In this situation, this is what you should do or If this is the kind of kid the Lord gave you, this is how you should handle it. And those can be super helpful. I need those. But a lot of times parents will read those—and even the Family Discipleship book, some of the people who read that, and while I’m very proud of that work and I don’t mean disparage it at all—but people will read a book like that and say, I actually feel worse because it’s saying here’s something you could do or should do, and I didn’t do that. So, then a parent feels this kind of sense of shame or guilt or regret or woe is me. What was I doing? Why did I miss it? Or they fear what that means for their kids in the future. So this book is about how God would have us respond to that sense, that feeling. And what I do is we walk through the fruit of the spirit from Galatians 5 and show how what is so often our parental response is not a fruit of the Spirit. It’s not what comes from walking with God to walk in exhaustion and shame and bitterness, or to make parenting decisions based on what would please the culture and the people around us, and how the things that the Lord says he would instill in us if we walk with him would actually relieve us from those things. And so I want it to read like a pastor sitting down with somebody who they care about and saying, I see that you feel this way. I see that you feel this grief or this hardship or this difficulty. I want you to see the Lord sets you free so that, honestly, they could read a book like Family Discipleship or any other parenting book and say, I can read somebody this is what you could do or should do, and know that it’s not there to shame me or accuse me but rather to advocate for me the same way that the Lord advocates for me. While he knows every mistake I make, he’s not called the accuser; he’s called the advocate. And what does that mean that I have in Christ? It means I have somebody who knows my mistakes and calls me to something better because he loves me, not because he wants to torture me.

07:23 - We Are Not Alone in Our Parenting Struggles

Matt Tully
I think sometimes as parents we can think that the struggles that we are facing in parenting, and maybe in particular the feelings of shame, regret, and insufficiency, that we’re alone or we’re unique in how we’re struggling with those things. It can be easy to just think that other parents—the parent across the road, the other parents at church—they seem like they’ve got it together a little bit better than I do. They’re more faithful with their family discipleship. Their kids are better behaved. I wonder if you can give us insight as a pastor, who’s I’m sure speaking with parents a lot and helping, counseling them, encouraging them—are we all in the same boat here together when it comes to parenting? Or is it just me?

Adam Griffin
You’re touching on something really key. In fact, in the book I talk about this a little bit, where we talk about how kids have very vivid imaginations. They can imagine monsters in their closet and under their bed, and they can even imagine beautiful things like unicorns. And when we grow up, we think parents grow out of their imaginations, but we don’t. We actually still have a very wild imagination; we just imagine that other parents are like unicorns. They’re getting it. They’re perfect. And then in our anxiety, we have this wild imagination about what disease our kid might get, what disaster might come upon us. And while there are very real awful things here, our preoccupation with hypothetical problems is a problem for a lot of parents, as well as our assuming that if we compare ourselves to other parents, we’re the ones lacking and they’re doing great. The truth is we are all sinners who fall short of the glory of God. And yet those who walk with the Spirit are also told, Did you know that one fruit of the Spirit will be goodness? That there will be goodness in you where you feel inadequate and maybe because you’ve compared yourself to other people, there’s goodness because of the Spirit in you. Or what it talks about in Galatians 5, even before it gets to the fruit of the Spirit, is that there’s true freedom to be found in Christ. But what we tend to find ourselves doing, Matt, and I’m sure you’ve done this too, is we judge others and judge ourselves so naturally when it comes to parenting. We love to sit in the judgment seat and say, Oh, that family, they’re not doing it the way I would do it. That family, they’re doing it better than I did. Now I feel bad about me, and I judge myself harshly. When the freedom that Christ offers is the freedom to say, He’ll be the judge. I can actually walk more free of that and say that’s not even my job. I’m not going to be the judge. He’s going to be the judge. And he’s a better judge, because he knows it all, and he’s much more gracious than I am. I can jump to conclusions. He doesn’t ever jump to conclusions. I can be harsh where he’d be gracious. He’s forgiven me for repeated mistakes that if somebody repeated that mistake against me, I’d have a hard time forgiving them. The Lord is so much more gracious than we give him credit for. And honestly, other parents are so much more broken than we give them credit for. And honestly, if there’s a broken parent that makes you feel better about yourself, that’s also another example of how judgment in your heart is bringing you the justification, or seeking for justification, that you actually have in Christ already.

10:23 - Is Shame Affecting Your Parenting?

Matt Tully
You talk about a number of the struggles that we have as parents in this book, and one that we’ve already mentioned is this struggle with shame. And that’s kind of a theme that runs throughout the book. And that can have a really distorting effect even on our parenting as we leave that undealt with in our own hearts. I wonder if you could just share some examples of what that might look like in a parent’s life. What might be some warning signs or ways that shame manifests itself in our lives as parents?

Adam Griffin
Probably one of the main ways that shame manifests itself in our lives as parents is as an excuse for what we’re not doing. So, we feel ashamed of our best efforts or we feel ashamed of our lack of effort, and so we hide behind it and say, This is why I’m not discipling my kids well, because I don’t know enough of the Bible. I don’t feel great about that. I actually feel kind of ashamed about that. But we hide behind it like it’s an excuse. The reason I don’t discipline my kids as I ought is because when I do, I feel bad about it or it hasn’t gone well. And what is that? That’s a shame that has driven me to inactivity. And what we’ve seen since the Garden of Eden is that when we mess up, we feel ashamed and then we want to hide. We don’t deal with it; we hide from it. And that’s the same thing we see with parents is that we run from opportunities to feel bad about what we’ve done, instead of being able to say, No, if I put in my best effort here, if I give my able sacrifice—here it is; this is the best I’ve got, Lord, the Lord is pleased even if it’s broken, even if it’s not perfect. The Lord is pleased. Why? Because I have union with his Son, Jesus Christ, and in his righteousness he is pleased with me. What’s so helpful, and I talk about this a lot in the book, is if your kid came to you ashamed, you wouldn’t humiliate them in response. But when we feel ashamed as a parent, we feel like the Lord’s humiliating us. But really, the Father knows better than we do what we need to hear in that moment. And if you, as an imperfect parent, would not humiliate your kid who feels ashamed, nor would you encourage them to hide from you. You wouldn’t say, You made such a big mistake, it’s probably best if you go away from me and pretend this didn’t happen, and this ruined our relationship a little bit. We wouldn’t do that as an imperfect parent, so how much more a perfect Father, when we’ve made a mistake, might actually call us to draw closer? To not drive a wedge between us, but to draw closer. We talk in the book about Joshua the high priest in the vision that the prophet has where he is underdressed and he’s in his soiled clothes and he stands with Satan, the accuser. And we talk about Satan’s accusations. I am tormented sometimes not because they are deceptive but because they are accurate. Satan could accurately accuse me as a parent and say, Adam is sometimes lazy. Adam is sometimes harsh. Adam doesn’t love his kids as much as he should. Adam will go and speak about parenting and ignore his kids to do it. He could have all these accurate accusations. And the Lord doesn’t stand there and go, Hey, that’s not true about him. No. What the Lord says about Joshua the high priest is, Do you not know that I plucked this man out of the fire? He’s accomplished for us something that overcomes our shame, not Hey, if you could just clean up your life, then you wouldn’t have to walk in shame.

Matt Tully
That is the thing we struggle with. We either try to ignore our failures, or we deny them and we act like they don’t exist, or we just get stuck in them and we’re mired and we’re just wrecked by them. But you’re saying there’s an alternative to that, that actually God’s alternative to that is not to deny our failures. It’s also not to just leave us in them.

Adam Griffin
That’s exactly right. To pluck us out of them. What a gift to say the Lord knows them and he’s not described as an accuser? He’s described as our advocate, like we talked about. So, where Satan’s accusations can be accurate, or I could look at myself and say, I see where I’m messed up as a parent, I don’t think that truth is meant to torment. It is meant to drive me towards the Lord. So, any place that I find myself like Adam and Eve in the garden going, Oh man, I’ve made a huge mistake, and it drives me from God or away from my kids, then I am using that in the same way Satan would have me use it. The same way the enemy would have me use it. The sin drives a wedge between me and God instead of seeing in this sin an opportunity to really experience the freedom that comes from being a forgiven person, the freedom that comes from being a person who can be reconciled to other people and to God through the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. And so that’s the fruit that comes in the Spirit. There’s this kind of bitter, self-insulting shame, which a lot of parents deal with. It’s never something the Lord would encourage in the word to go like, Hey, when you’ve made a mistake, if you’re not going to torment yourself, have somebody else insult you for a while. That’s just not the Scripture. No. We confess it to one another. And then anytime we see somebody who confesses sin before the Lord, he both forgives them and tells them, Hey, let’s not do that again. Let’s be set free from that in every sense. Set free from the consequence, but also set free from the repetition. And that’s what I want for parents is not just to think differently about mistakes they’ve made, but I want their family to look different, to look like a casual sense of I’m not bearing the burden of how awful my mistakes are. No, it slid right off my back. Why? Because I’m a person free in Christ. I know I’ve made mistakes. I know that I’m not a perfect parent. But I’m not reveling and hiding in that either and saying, I can’t help it. I’m not perfect. No, I’m comforted in the fact that my advocate, Christ, has set me free.

15:49 - Have-To Parenting vs. Get-To Parenting

Matt Tully
Another feeling that all parents will struggle with at many points in their lives as parents is just feeling exhausted.

Adam Griffin
Oh yeah.

Matt Tully
Whether that’s physically or mentally or emotionally exhausted. I wonder if you can help us understand how does the gospel—this good news of the grace of God that’s for us in Christ—how does that help me when I just feel exhausted?

Adam Griffin
One of my favorite chapters to write in the book was about exhaustion. One, because I know what it feels like to be exhausted. In it we talk about a passage from Thessalonians where Paul says, “for the idle, they should be admonished; for the weak, they should be encouraged.” And so I do want to make that delineation right now as well. If we are saying we’re exhausted, and that’s why we’re not discipling our kids or parenting our kids or playing with our kids, when in reality we’re not exhausted, we just don’t feel like it, then I would say like the idol, we need to be admonished and say, I’m saying I’m too tired to do what I should do, but the reality is I don’t feel like doing what I should do.

Matt Tully
Apathy and exhaustion are not the same thing.

Adam Griffin
Exactly right.

Matt Tully
Sometimes we do conflate them a little bit.

Adam Griffin
Exactly. And at the same time, there’s real exhaustion where I would say I feel really weak. And what would the Lord do in that? He’d encourage us. So, the fruit of the Spirit is not apathy. The fruit of the Spirit is not exhaustion. But one of the fruit of the Spirit that I had never fully understood until I really studied was the word patience. We use it a lot as parents to mean leave me alone while I’m getting something done. That’s what we mean when we say, I need you to be patient to our children. Ironically, we ask them for patience, demonstrating our own impatience, saying, Hey, leave mom and dad alone for a second. We use it displaying that my child is a nuisance to me, so they need to be patient because I am not willing to be patient, which the Bible would call hypocrisy—when I’m asking for something from someone that I’m not willing to give them myself. But the word patience, which is sometimes in some translations translated forbearance or long suffering, which is a more accurate depiction of what that fruit of the Spirit is. It means my ability to keep putting up with something for a long time. It’s more like our word for grit for fortitude than it is for just timidity, for just waiting quietly. So, what the Lord offers us in patience is fortitude. It’s the ability to keep going. If you are walking in the Spirit, one of the things he says is, I offer you, if you walk with me, is endurance—the ability to keep going even when it’s hard. Our generation is so blessed by what Christ has to say about rest. And rest is a blessing. And what the Bible says about sleep, and sleep is a blessing. And if we are physically exhausted or mentally exhausted or emotionally exhausted, sleep and rest are a blessing. But he also talks about patience, the ability that he gives us, or the gift he gives us, to keep going. And so as a parent to recognize that in Christ I can rest while I’m running, like he says in Isaiah, “you will run and not grow weary.” It doesn’t say you’ll sit down, so you won’t get weary. He says, “you’ll run and not grow weary.” And Christ says, All of you who are weary, you can come to me and you can rest. There are times when we sit down and there are times when we don’t get tired. And both of those are aspects of the Christian life. And it’s when we kind of beat ourselves up for one or the other, saying, Oh, I just need to sit down for a while. Oh, I’ve been sitting for a while. Now am I lazy? We have to give ourselves a little bit of a break that comes from the perspective that says sometimes I need the patience that says, I can do this again. I can get up again. I can go again. I can be up half the night with a baby, and I’m going to be all right. We don’t have to brag about the hardest parts of our life. Weariness is something that while shame and bitterness and some of the other things we discuss in the book are harder for parents to talk about, exhaustion is almost something we brag about. When somebody asks you how you’re doing, you talk about how little you’ve slept, how fast your life is going, how busy you are, and we almost live in that identity of exhaustion.

Matt Tully
We kind of revel in it.

Adam Griffin
Exactly right. It’s almost like we’re saying we are so important, we’ve got so much going on. But if we instead had parents that felt so refreshed in the Lord that could say, I actually have more in the tank. I feel like I am not worn out. I feel like I am driven towards the Lord in patience to have endurance to keep going. We have so many friends who are single who desire marriage and so many friends who are in marriages that are really hard. And when you pair those two together and realize at one point, our friends in marriages that are really hard really desired this marriage. But now that they have it, it’s one of their number one complaints. This guy I married, he’s just so filthy. Oh, this woman I married, she’s such a nag. There was a point at which you said, I really want somebody like that. It must be nice to have somebody like that, even in their brokenness. But we do the same thing with parenting where we say, I want a kid. A kid would be a blessing, and then we all talk about them like they’re a burden. They ruin vacations. They take away our careers.

Matt Tully
In the book you had this great little bit where you talk about the difference between have-to parenting and get-to parenting. And I just thought that was so convicting for me to think about the lens through which I view my children so often is this I have to do this for them, whatever that might be. I have to shepherd them in this way, have a hard conversation, or get up early. Rather than having this perspective that this is a privilege that the Lord has given us, and he’s actually empowered us and readied us for this work as parents. Speak a little bit more to how you’ve fought for the right perspective on that front in your own parenting.

Adam Griffin
In that chapter we talk about how the right perspective is driven by love. If I really love the person I’m doing this for, then it becomes I get to do this instead of I have to do this. It’s not a chore, it’s not an errand in the sense of it’s not drudgery, where it’s a life-sucking opportunity to just be a servant who’s like Cinderella on the ground and needing to be rescued. No, it’s a privilege. I talk in that chapter about one time when I was talking to a friend of mine, not even realizing what I was doing, I was just talking about how hard my week had been, how hard my life was, all the things I had to do for my kids. And I talked about my kids as such an impediment to my freedom. And this friend I was talking to is a childless man who’s always wanted to be a dad. And as he gently called me out—and he’s not even a believer; he’s not a Christian—he just very gently called me out on what I was bemoaning he has always wanted. And in that I realized my entitlement to say, I want these kids, I love these kids, but I will look at the Lord and complain about them, or I will look at my friends and complain about them—what is that? I turned a blessing into a burden in my heart. And so what love does is it transforms that into a privilege. It is a real privilege to get up in the middle of the night and hold a baby. It really is. It is a real privilege to change diapers. Now, the day that we changed our last diaper was a great day. That is an awesome day. But it is a privilege to have a child depend on you like that. And it’s such a picture for us of the gospel too, of how we can take something that is maybe mundane and can feel like a chore and say, I’m going to consecrate this to the Lord. Not just because I love my kids but because I love him. I’m going to be able to serve my kids in a way that it’s going to demonstrate to my Father I’m willing to give up something. What good is the sacrifice if we never have to give anything up that we actually love? So when you have to give up time, what’s more precious than our time? Oh, what an honor to give that up for the Lord. And I can treat it like Cain did, where I go, Well, I hate having to give this up. But I guess I have to. Or I can treat it like Abel, where I go, What a delight that I serve such a God that this would be a way I could honor him. I could honor him by vacuuming today, or I could honor him by picking the kids up and dropping them off, by helping with the homework, by making the dinner, by cleaning the sauce off their face and the floor and the ceiling. This is a great opportunity to love and serve my God. And I get to do that because the Lord’s entrusted me with these kids.

Matt Tully
And these kids are precious themselves. So often we can just take for granted the significance of this human life that the Lord has entrusted to us, not just to keep them physically alive but to even lead them spiritually towards true life. That’s something that is so easy for me as a parent to just take that all for granted.

Adam Griffin
Exactly right. Well, we get used to it, right? And as soon as you get used to, it’s no longer something we glory in. You think about the people of Israel in Exodus and how quickly they forgot that the Lord had rescued them from Egypt. It took forty days from the time the elders were eating in the presence of God to when they created a golden calf and said, This is now our God that led us out of Egypt. And that is so like us. When the child is born, we’re like, What a privilege! I could never stop loving this kid. And very soon after that they won’t stop screaming and you’re like, What am I going to do? I just can’t handle this. And we very quickly turn that privilege, that blessing into this burden that it’s okay to whine and complain about.

24:42 - Advice for When Parenting Affects Your Marriage

Matt Tully
That chapter in particular just struck me so helpfully, and that right there is worth getting the book for. Many studies have been done over the years, and, undoubtedly, just our own experience of parenting as parents, show that parenting can be hard on marriages. It’s a major factor in marital conflict. It’s oftentimes cited in divorce, that there’s disagreement and conflict over children and parenting. I know you didn’t write a marriage book here. This is a book on parenting, but I wonder if you have any advice for parents who feel like their parenting has taken a toll on their marriage?

Adam Griffin
Oh, tons of advice. To not walk through that by yourself. To see your spouse as somebody also that the Lord has given you and that is a human being who bears the image of God. Sometimes when we disagree with one another, we start to disrespect one another. And when we lose respect for one another, then that bitterness starts to sneak in. That resentment starts to sneak in, where you start to keep score and you go, I am doing the best or I am doing the most, and I am getting the least from you. And in that we start to build grudges even against the people that we said we would love the most and that we’d be committed to. In our vows when we get married, almost all of us say something along the lines of “for richer or poorer.” We don’t make these comments lightly. We’re saying, Hey, I’m going to vow to stay with you even when it’s hard. I’m not going anywhere. And yet when we get into marriage, we go, I actually really prefer the richer stage. And not just financially, but in our marriage I prefer when we’re giving each other the benefit of the doubt. I prefer when we are loving each other. What happens in marriages is truly in our heart we reveal, I really prefer to be right. And I feel right, but the fact that you think I’m wrong really grates against my ego and against my heart. And the truth is being right and winning is typically not going to solve our marriage the way we think it is. If you get in an argument with your spouse and they say, Actually, you’ve been right all along, it can feed an ugly part of your ego. What I think a marriage can do, especially if parenting has become the thing that’s driven you apart, is still run to the Lord together. Often couples will run to their friends to complain, to whine. They will maybe run to a counselor to sort through. Praise God for that. But they will rarely run to the Lord with thorough prayer life and say, We need to really dedicate this to the Lord. I feel like we are on different pages. I feel like we do not agree on this. And where it’s not clear in the Bible what we should do here, we need to dedicate this time to prayer to ask the Lord to lead us. And if we could instead humble ourselves and say—and honestly, this is the best advice I could give to any marriage—if in the midst of conflict you can personally own 100 percent everything you can of what you contributed, saying, I did this, and I shouldn’t have done that—

Matt Tully
And you’ve got to say it. You can’t just own it in your head.

Adam Griffin
No, exactly right. You’ve got to say, Hey, I could have done this better, or I shouldn’t have done that. Or, here’s what I see in me without expecting or demanding some kind of reciprocal ownership. You just own everything you can, and then you do your best to hold absolutely nothing against the other person of their contribution to this. I’m not saying they didn’t contribute, I’m just saying you try not to hold it against them. What we read in the Bible is when people are forgiven their debts—this insurmountable debt you’ve been forgiven by God—and then you see this person who’s been forgiven an insurmountable debt holding a very small debt against somebody else, and we rarely think about that as a marriage passage, but it’s the perfect marriage passage. You’ve been forgiven so much by God. Could you not consider the fact that even if you’ve been wronged, even if they’ve insulted you, even if they’ve name-called or yelled or undermined you, that you might have the opportunity right now to forgive somebody else a debt that is so tiny compared to what you’ve been forgiven. So, if you could own everything you can and hold nothing against them, which is another way of saying if you could be humble in this marriage, you might find that you can reconcile to one another easier than doing the opposite of saying, I’m demanding you own everything you can, and I’m holding it against you until you do. Now, of course if a marriage has reached an unhealthy point or there’s anything abusive going on in there, I’m not saying this is the wisest strategy, and I’m not saying somebody needs to be stepped all over and walked all over to do this. I’m saying biblically and in a godly manner, if you want to reconcile and get on the same page, own your contribution to what’s wrong and don’t hold their contribution against them.

29:06 - Advice for Three Types of Parents

Matt Tully
That’s so helpful. Adam, I wonder if you can complete this sentence for three different types of parents.

Adam Griffin
Fill in the blank?

Matt Tully
Yeah, fill in the blank. The three types of parents would be expectant parents, people who are just on the verge of parenting; the in-the-thick-of-it parents (maybe you and I are in this category with young kids or teenage kids, in the highest demand phase of parenting in terms of just time and energy); and then maybe for the where-has-time-gone parents. Maybe their kids are just heading off to college or maybe they’ve been out of the house for a long time, and they’re looking back and just thinking, Man that time flew. The phrase to complete would be, Don’t forget . . . what?

Adam Griffin
Once for new parents, once for in-the-thick-of-it parents (which I like that, or the thicket maybe even), and then once for the almost empty-nesting or empty-nesting parent.

Matt Tully
The where-has-time-gone parents. So yeah, Don’t forget that . . .

Adam Griffin
For the expectant parent, don’t forget that you’re not alone. Even if you’re a single parent who’s expecting a baby, the Lord has given you this baby, but he’s not walked away. He didn’t. He didn’t leave it on your front porch and abandon it with you. He is in it with you. He loves this kid more than you do, so don’t forget that you’re not alone. Which means if you’re nursing that baby at two in the morning, or if you’re changing the diaper, or there’s been the blowout in public (oh man, I hate it), or if you’re in the hospital and things are not going well, you’re expecting this baby but maybe things aren’t going the way you wanted, you just remember that the Lord has written this story, and he can be trusted. You are not alone in this. And then if you’re in the thick of it, remember that—is that the sentence?

Matt Tully
Don’t forget.

Adam Griffin
Don’t forget. If you’re in the thick of it, don’t forget that you are the adult. So often as the adult, we treat it like we’re the authority, we’re the boss, and we get to excuse our own sin. No, you’re the adult means you get to demonstrate what you want to see in your kids. So, you be the first to repent. You be the first to demonstrate what it would look like to show more patience. This is what it looks like to apologize. So, you’re the adult. You show them how to do what you’re demanding from them. So, be the adult in the thick of it. And then for the person who’s about to be an empty nester, don’t forget that you are not done. Sometimes we have this picture in our head that once a kid moves out of the house, parenting is over. The truth is that until the grave, we still get to be a parent. Jim Burns writes in his book about parenting adult children, “All advice sounds like criticism to an adult child.” And so you do have to remember that you are still their parent, but if they are an adult now, you have to remember that a lot of what you have to share with them will come across as criticism. So, how do you share with them and hope that, like Jethro shared with Moses, that they’d be humble enough to receive it if it really is something that needs to change? But you are not done. You hope that you’ve done a good enough job that there’s a lot of independence and autonomy, but you are still praying for them. You are still desperate for them to come to faith if they haven’t yet or to follow Jesus in a new and maturing way. You’re far from done. Spurgeon talked about how as much as pastors pray before they preach, a pastor should pray even more after, because once it’s out there, once the Lord has it out there, that’s when it has the opportunity to grow into something special. And so as a parent, sometimes it feels like, You know what? We did the best we could, and when we get to walk away. No, we’re not done yet. Let’s keep praying for these kids. Let’s dedicate even more time to sharing our faith with them and discipling them. And I get it, they may not live under a roof anymore, or maybe they don’t want to.

Matt Tully
Yeah, it might look different.

Adam Griffin
Yes, it might look completely different, but this is a chance to say I have more time than ever to dedicate to praying for this child and to consider what could I do that would really delight them? Chelsea and I, my wife, we talk about how much it’s a blessing to do things that somebody else would be delighted by without being asked. And that’s such a healthy part of marriage. If you want to add fuel to a marriage, you do what you know would bless them without being asked. And the same is true for a parent of adult children. What would really bless them without them having to ask me for it? How can I provide this for you, do this for you, and surprise you with this in a way that would really delight you? Sometimes that’s more space. Okay. But I’m still going to pray for you like crazy. That’s what I would say. Those are my blanks.

33:28 - Analyzing Parenting Clichés

Matt Tully
That’s good. Okay. Final couple questions here. What’s a parenting cliché that’s actually true?

Adam Griffin
A parenting cliché that’s actually true. Matt, that’s a good question. I think I’ve heard the Christian parent say that having kids has really helped me understand my relationship to the heavenly Father. Before you’re a parent you might go like, Oh, I think I know God pretty well, buddy. You just becoming a parent does not mean you know something different. But the truth is, I really think you start to understand some things. You go, Oh, I really can love this person through all their mistakes. I really will not stop loving this person even if they tell me they hate me. I really will remain committed to them their whole lifelong even if our relationship ends up being scarred or broken. I can’t imagine a day where I wouldn’t be still committed to them. Now, I do talk to a lot of parents who say they’re having trouble liking their kids or even loving their kids who are struggling. That’s common. But I believe I understand the heavenly Father and his love for us, his children, so much more because I’m able to look at my own sons and say, Oh man, if I can love them like this, how much more so must the heavenly Father be able to love me like this?

Matt Tully
And it even feels different than the love you have for your spouse.

Adam Griffin
Yes. Very different.

Matt Tully
It feels just more inevitable with your children for some reason.

Adam Griffin
Well, part of it is it almost feels like your children are made in your image in a way that your spouse is not. So, where we are described as bearing the image of God, when you look at your children, some of it is this person is the way they are as a result of me. In some senses you could say I made them like this, either because of nurture or nature. So, when you look at that kid, there’s an ego part that may say, Oh, that kid got something good from me. And there’s a shame part that says, Oh man, they learned that from me. That poor kid. They got my genetics. Oh, that poor child. My kids are going to lose their hair by the time they’re in their twenties. Those poor kids. But there is something to that. I get a little glimpse of what the Lord must see. Not in an egotistical way, but in a way that he has valued me so much that he would say, I would pay a huge price to make sure we could be together forever. And without that huge price, we couldn’t be. And so it gives you a glimpse into love in a new context, in a new dynamic. Similar to the way some families would say when they adopted they got this new view of what it was like to say, Will I really love this child like they are my own? And it gives them this view of, Yes! Of course I do. How much more so must the heavenly Father love those who were his enemies and now are his children?

Matt Tully
The other side of this question is, What’s a parenting cliché that’s actually false?

Adam Griffin
A parenting cliché that is actually false. One that I have heard both from Christians and non-Christians alike is the cliché that if kids are present on a vacation, it’s not a vacation; it’s a trip.

Matt Tully
I have said that. I have said that.

Adam Griffin
And that is a cliché that I get why people say it, but it is a way of saying, I regret these kids, or I resent these kids. I get that what we’re trying to communicate is that if I were on vacation and I didn’t have kids here, I would do different things.

Matt Tully
It would feel different. It would look different.

Adam Griffin
But it would be absent of something really beautiful. I hear so many Christian couples when they get married say, *We don’t want to have kids for three, four, five, six years because we’d like to travel, we’d like to see the world, we’d like to enjoy things—as if a kid would ruin your life. As if a kid would ruin your enjoyment.

Matt Tully
You can no longer enjoy life.

Adam Griffin
Yes. And you can’t travel. You have a child now. Well, I get what we mean. It would make things more complicated. It may make things more inconvenient. But in some ways, so does marriage.C an you imagine somebody saying the same thing about their spouse to say, Hey, we want to get married, but we’re not going to get married for a couple more years because we really want to enjoy singleness. I just really want to enjoy not having to be married to you. No, because there’s a person assigned to it, how rude would that be to say to them? And you would never say that to your child as an adult, maybe to say like, Hey, before you were born, your dad and I had so much fun. And then along came you.

Matt Tully
No vacation was ever the same.

Adam Griffin
Exactly. I can really understand where it comes from and I know what it is. In some ways it is the purest and most innocent way of saying kids make trips complicated or they make things more inconvenient, but it’s an inconvenience I would pay a lot for.

Matt Tully
That just gets back to the mindset that we can get in as parents so often. We would never explicitly say, My child is a burden or I’m not grateful for my child, but we can have a perspective, a tinted glasses that colors how we view our children, and we do start to slide into viewing them more as a liability, more as a burden than as a blessing.

Adam Griffin
Which is not biblical. There’s nothing in the Bible that would paint a child as a curse. Like, And then I cursed them with a child. Anytime you hear a story where somebody wants a child, it’s because they want a blessing. Anytime you hear the psalmist describe children, it’s like, Oh, you are so blessed if you’ve got a bunch of kids. So, for us then as a society to say, Oh, you got cursed with kids. I’m so sorry. While we wouldn’t say that explicitly, that is what we say when we say, Man, I had to take my kids with me, or Ugh, my kids’ lives are so busy. No, I wouldn’t trade that for the world. I’ll take that inconvenience any day. Let’s go.

Matt Tully
Adam, thank you so much for helping us to reframe perhaps how we’re viewing our call as parents. This incredible calling that is ultimately something that we need Christ, we need the gospel, we need God’s grace to actually do. We just appreciate the encouragement from you today.

Adam Griffin
I’ve been honored to be here. Thanks for having me, Matt.

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