Firestarters

There's fire in us all.  How and when do we let it burn?

I began to write about my daughter's own in my last post. It's more often hers that stirs up the strongest response in me.  Perhaps it's the depth to which I relate to it, being myself a daughter, a sister... a female.

Naturally, we parents are quick to extinguish fires.  It feels safer.  We seem to have control by the looks of it, but our fear-filled force may very well leave a barren land after the flame's stamped out. Or it turns the fire into fury. Be it a slow, steady burn, one day it just blows and consumes anything in its path.  By forcing our way we only damage what God intended for beautiful purpose. 

I have a picture of backburning. It's a calculated method and likely implemented this week to help rescue Australia from dozens of bushfires burning there. Using any natural or man-made gaps in vegetation such as a river or road, fires ignited purposefully at such "firebreaks" will run back toward the wildfire and consume any potential fuel threatening to increase that fire's power. A positive force is applied.

What if we parents start little fires?  Clearly,  not the kind that would mean "exasperating" our children.  What about starting fires along the pure and good bounds of God's ways?  Our kids' passions that are specifically turning toward the dangerous might stay confined and find no more to consume. Instead, we direct their steps in order to usher in God's holy design for them by accompanying the work he's already begun. We're fanning the flames he ignited in the first.  As servants chosen for this purpose, we act in humility. And we must pray.

I have friends who began an online community centered around a short-term, concentrated prayer effort for their own kids.  It has stirred up my desire to pray more consistently to this end: to keep discovering and subsequently celebrating the passions in my kids in ways that won't bring hindrance but will fuel what our Father intended for Glory. And as I write, I am reminded that prayer brings the Fire that consumes the offering and fills the place with Glory! (See 2 Chronicles! I may have to pick that up in another post....)

I'll share a sort of backburning I've seen bring good things to my home. Kids desire boundaries. In fact, when they act out of control, it may be their way of crying out to understand the boundaries we've created or why we've neglected to set others. When my firstborn was an older infant, he'd fight diaper changes because it interrupted his play.  That was expected.  He'd get quite mad, though, and that seemed out of character to me.  He was so determined and strong that I'd physically struggle to hold him in place. The more force I used, mainly to avoid a nasty mess, the more power he seemed to gain. I guess it became a battle I was willing to fight, because it kept on until one day I smacked his thigh in the middle of an episode. Did he cry and submit and look longingly for an embrace of reassurance? Oh, no, he hit me back - with the fire burning hot.

That was that. It all came back to me - but not all at once - how gentleness covers mistakes and turns away wrath. A firebreak. I started to practice lowering my voice and upping the patience when my son raised his voice along with his temper. The response was amazing.  In the months to follow and years since, we've learned that our boy is full of his own fire - for what is just.  He's particularly sensitive to aggression, such as pushiness in people or unrest in his surroundings.  My choice to show him kindness in the midst of his own resistance toward me would snuff out the flames of hostility nine times out of ten.  It still does, and he's twelve.

Yesterday, I approached our daughter the same. Her older brothers and I have been lying around the house with the flu this week. Not a party, but she seems to think it so. She woke, insisting she wasn't going to school because she was too tired.  I'll use some force at times to get her going, usually coupled with silliness that eventually turns her mood around.  I didn't have strength for that yesterday, so I picked her up and held her in my lap.  I simply acknowledged her cry.  After five minutes of cuddles, she was chatting and pleased to get on with her day, that wildfire of innocent delight flickering inside and out!