Soooo, about parenting.

are you ready, yes, ready, God said he forgives you, yes, God said he forgives you, that's so arrogant for us, we are going to celebrate seven years of marriage in March, we have three children, the oldest is Eden, she is six years old, our middle daughter is Autumn, she is. two, our youngest daughter is wise, she is three months old, so we are in the middle of this, but at the same time we are very new to this, so we just want to offer a little wisdom that God has given us in a short period . period of time and thanks for having us, yeah, so we got five points, that's it, it's not much, just five points, uh, about things that we trust in God or things that we're thinking about and trying to apply to . our

parenting

so that we can raise children who love God and love people.

The first point is one that I struggle with a lot and that is that I am trying to be very intentional about not taking the parents out of my dysfunction and I say this because when I started going to therapy I realized that a lot of my behaviors and patterns My mother did things the same way I did things and she did great things. She was a great mother, but there were other things that I feel like she should improve on as a believer, so it can be scary to feel like she does. I know that your flaws and your problems will inevitably rub off on your children, but how to limit how much of it rubs off on you, yeah, yeah, that's really good, one of the things that I feel like the Lord has shown me over the years. years.

I have been a father through therapy too and he literally shows me this. I feel like a lot of times we can look at our parents' mistakes and see our parents' flaws and say we're not going to be like that. We're not going to do this and one of the things I learned in therapy was that I try so hard not to repeat my father's mistakes that I can potentially lose myself. You know a lot of things, so one of the things I went through in therapy was just looking at the pattern of my life and a lot of times we talk about generational curses and things like that without realizing that a lot of generational curses fall into place when we try hard. so much for avoiding them. what the generation before us was, but what happens is we end up missing out on a lot of other things and so if your father wasn't there, you'll make sure you're always there, but you'll forget about supporting your family. children in the way that is necessary and, therefore, one of the things that I feel that God has taught me as a father is not to focus so much on what my father did not do, but to focus on him and allow him to be the basis of my upbringing because He is the perfect father and therefore if we continue to look at flawed men and what they didn't do, we probably wouldn't do what they did, but we would miss a lot of other things, I don't know if that made sense, oh it made a lot of sense. , yes, I say it, yes, therapy and the Lord had to show me that, um, yes, our second point is something that you talk about a lot, because we have three daughters, they require a different one. feeling outside of us and you always talk about how as a parent and as a parent, you really want to make sure that you raise them with gentleness, yeah, because, growing up, no one showed as much gentleness on the South Side of Chicago as, well, you better do it. . tough like no one is nice to you on the street you don't say when I go to work they're not going to be just with you like that no one really gave us permission to feel that way and grow up As a black man, I feel like in America where are you tall or are you conditioned to know that in many ways society is not always going to be for you, and that's why I feel like black parents, they do it for love, but we try, we create this environment where this is tough love and So we won't be consumed and swallowed up when we go out, you know, into the real world and therefore creating an environment that will prepare my son for the real world, but also give him permission to feel and be kind and then , when you express what you feel, I can, yes, just change the way I was taught to manage your emotions to manage your feelings that you don't have to dismiss, you know, your feelings and emotions, I made a post once and I said that , in our house, our children's voices are not, as an author, they have no authority, but they are just as valuable, which means that they are their own voices matter, their opinions matter and when they express why they feel I want to be what kind enough to take him in and handle his care, yeah, I have this theory, um, that I guess I got into after reading and watching, you know, slave narratives and documentaries and books and stuff like that about how we're just a few generations of slavery, you know, maybe my great-great-grandmother, maybe my great-great-grandfather was a slave and when you imagine the emotional life, the mental health of an enslaved person, they are in a world of suffering and therefore , the best way to deal with it is to distance yourself sometimes emotionally from how you feel less, you get depressed so as not to break down, you know it, and I think that in that season for them that was what they had to do, but I think when you think about how when They emancipated themselves and had families, what did they teach their families, did they teach their families that same sense of survival when it comes to shutting down your emotions, shutting down your feelings as a defense mechanism from the world, etc.

I think in many ways black children and parents are byproducts of people who are enslaved and have to fight things, but I think God, in his grace, has now freed us in a way where we can be much more vulnerable. than we used to be. um and we can trust him when it comes to our emotions so I think in

parenting

is to say man I want to be kind to my son not to scare him from the world but to be like Jesus who says he's gentle and humble. his yoke is easy and his burden is light so I want to imagine and how I raise my children so they can be children and you know the older they get the safer they feel with us yeah especially when it comes to sailing .

A world that is truly evil and demonic. I want them to be. Yeah, feel free to be open because I think that's one of the reasons we do it. We don't want to create an environment where our children don't feel safe coming. for us good about how they feel and why they feel it and why they, girl, stop crying, you can't cry, the world won't let you cry, right, you can cry here, although yes, because it's better to believe that they will find someone more to say yes, that's true and that's why we want them to have a safe space now and so that we can always be that safe place for them, so especially as black women, you know, growing up in America, yeah , our third point is that we try very hard. and it is difficult, but we strive to value and respect the individuality of our children because, although in some sense our children are made in our image, they are different from us, ultimately they are made in the image of God and that means they were born .

They came into the world with a particular and specific personality that God gave them, their personality may resemble ours in some ways, but ultimately it is not ours in that way, so I think sometimes the problem in parenting It's your child's personality type. de is different from yours so it irritates you she is simply our eldest she is super what is the word strong character very stubborn curious what makes her talk a lot a nosy busybody and have a smart mouth she knows everything she believes she thinks she believes who knows everything in many ways and one of the things we had to remind ourselves is that she is not made in our image, he is made in the image of God and what that does is it helps us not to ignore how God has made it. her, but rather mold how God has made her and that's why we want her to be strong willed in a world that tells her she should be able to do and love whoever she wants, we just want her to be strong willed, we just want to redirect it the way correct, use this correctly for his glory.

You know, we want to be able to reign the way God made it, but not destroy the way God made it, yeah, and I think I think about that a lot. black homes uh a lot of times we don't know, you know, it's probably in other homes, but I grew up in a black family, so I speak for the black holes, uh, black families, no, we don't really know how. to distinguish what someone is responding to and what someone is when someone is really just trying to assert who they are and how they were created, so I think trying to find balance in parenting, our oldest diet is like maybe he wasn't responding, maybe he was trying. express yourself in a way that you know that explains how she feels and how she feels, so instead of saying, stop responding, let me put my pride aside and sit with her and help her. process how she feels and I think one thing that we feel like we learned is that we are teaching her how to be a communicator because I think a lot of kids respond because they don't know how to express themselves and I think a lot of people don't have the space to, yeah, a lot of kids respond because they're never told. they taught how to express themselves and so yeah, they know how to tell the two apart because there's an aspect of me where you just talk like crazy and you need to. you need to get checked out you need to get checked out and if you continue to do that we're going to put our hands on you not in the church but in a gentle way but in a gentle way in the name of Jesus um but you know it's the aspect of letting them be themselves and help them process that mm-hmm the fourth point is particularly with us and I think it's with people who are raising girls and boys, but there's a different kind of burden that we have when it comes to instilling value in our children.

I know you talk about that a lot, especially as a parent, the weight that you feel when it comes to making sure that your children know that they are valued, yes, because I had said before that I never want to, not tell my children something that they have not wanted to hear. in their entire lives, which is that they are beautiful, they are valuable, they are worth more than everything. and because I think one thing that God has made obvious to us is that it is our job to point out to them the fact that they are image bearers and because you are an image bearer you are a person of dignity, honor and worth.

Well, and since we are their parents, it is our job to point them to the glory in which they were created. By the way, they were created to glorify God, but in a very humanistic sense, I feel that God also created. we want validation from other human beings and the first people who should give us this validation are our parents, they are the people who should point us to Jesus but also let us know that you have value and worth not only to God but to me and So, as a parent , I never want my children to leave my house and get something they didn't get here first, which is a man who will affirm you and the idea that you are beautiful you don't have to.

You don't have to give up your body to be beautiful. You don't have to give up your time to be beautiful. You don't have to give up your body to be desired or valuable. You are only that because God made you that way. Amen and you too because you are special to me and that's why I feel like you know that when I hand them over one day I don't want Bella to be a new song for them, I want Bella always wanted to be an old one. song for them, um, but it's a song that they appreciate, but they've heard a lot from their father, so yeah, just because it's instilling that value and courage in my daughters is very, very important to me, yeah, I was talking with Preston about it last night and I was saying you know a lot of us, not all, but a lot of us grew up without our fathers and that's not an experience that we know naturally, you know we had to go somewhere else to feel valued by men , which led us down destructive paths at times, but one experience I had with my father in particular is that I have a gap and it's beautiful too.

I felt very insecure about my gap growing up, just because you know you don't see gaps like that and I was about to close it, I was probably 14 so this is in high school and I had already done it. My mother was looking for doctors to help me close it because she understood that I didn't have too much, so she said: "do you want to." to close that, you can and one of the rare times I was with my dad I was saying hey I'm thinking about bringing my gap closer, he said I actually said yes and he asked me why would you do that and he.

That's how the first thing that attracted me to your mother was her gap and I just think that gaps are beautiful and what I told Preston was that the crazy thing is that when he said it it wasn't that he just wanted to not have my gap closed to What made him happy was that his affirmation of the beauty of the gap actually made me believe that she was beautiful too and I think that just speaks to what a heavy, heavy, heavy gift dads can be to their daughters. and their children and instilling courage and beauty and how they see themselves in the world, which brings us to our last point, which is trusting that God will raise us as we parent, but also trusting that God will raise them as we do. , because we think.

A lot of what we're doing is just trusting the spirit a little bit. Does this work? should do that should say this shouldI don't like it. It's like you can read a lot of books in the world but the books have no descriptions. How to help your child, who is made in the image of God, who is complicated and interesting and has a different path than anyone else. someone else, so I feel like I have to remind myself that God is my father and, therefore, because he is my father, he is a father. I like my father, but not only that, I have to remember that I am not a father just like God's hand is on me, but his hand is also on them, which helps me realize that, oh, how if you were with me on this, yeah, yeah, one thing that um being a good father, I didn't, I didn't feel it before I became a father, I feel like I recognize God as a good lord, a good king, um, but when I became a father, I knew he was my father.

I know, but it's become more of a reality for me, like how much of a father God is and so just remembering that, but also God has shown me that just like you have to scam, you have to constantly pay attention to my relationship. with you when it comes to being a parent to know how to follow your children, yes, because I believe that when we pay attention to the grace that God has given us constantly, we will automatically be more merciful to our children I think if we pay attention to them you know The patience that God has with us uh with our arrogance with our pride with our laziness our selfishness I think then we can be more patient with our children uh when it comes to all their flaws and sins, so uh, I don't know, Man, since I've been a father, he's been a consistently boss god.

Go back upstairs, eat, go back upstairs, you have to go up, yes, I feel that God loves us. to just constantly look at him you know be his father be his father be that mother because I often feel like I lose sight of the grace that I've been given as a son you know I'm sorry you know I have To remember that, often how much patience God has for me and It's also on a very deep level, like at the end of the day, I know my kids but I don't know my kids like God knows.

Not me, he knows the ins and outs of my heart. I know them by examining them, looking at their behaviors, but I'm still very, you know, human and very, I'm not, I'm not infinite and everything. -knowing what God is like and that is why God knows the ends and the ins and outs of my heart and is still patient with me, still loves me, is still kind to me, still gives me time to grow and it is so fair to understand God in the aspect of a father has helped me a lot to be patient with them, yeah, I remember when I was in the world, uh, my cousin Keisha, she prayed for me and she felt really, I guess, discouraged because I was just in some things where she just She didn't want me to get involved and she wasn't my mother, but I think what God guided her with is relevant to parents in general, which is to say, she went to God and said to God, didn't I do it?

I didn't say enough, I didn't pray enough um and God said, calm down, I don't think that's what she really said, I could say, she's still my girl, but he said, calm down, I love her more than you. and I think that should anchor us as parents as our children grow, whether they are babies, toddlers, high school students, teenagers and adults, is that God loves our children more than us and one of the educations that I have received from The greatest saints is that as a parent, you just plant seeds and everything is a mystery, if it's going to germinate, if it's going to water, what's going to happen and eventually, at some point, you look back and see that God was the one who watered the seeds. that you planted all the time.

And I think that relieves us from having so much anxiety or putting too much pressure on ourselves to be perfect, but reminding ourselves that God in raising him is sovereign and loving too, so I hope that encourages you all tonight, yes, God . God bless you, bless you all, that's why I pause, I say oh, I didn't stop to gather my thoughts before I spoke, let's pray lord, thank you for uh again for Charlie's quotes, thank you for the progressive, thanks for the way you are using. them to build your church and even be a benefit to the south side of chicago.

I ask God that you will help us empower them and build them up and love them through the little wisdom that you have given us and In the short time that we have been parents, I ask God that you guide me and Preston that you help us with our words, that help our language, our care. I ask God to help us be specific and intentional with what we say, I pray that you um, um, guide what we have to say and that it is really, really fruitful, I pray for all these things in the name of Jesus, oh , and technical difficulties, I pray that you are with Kim, you will be with the cameras in Jesus and also Lord, I pray that you give me mental clarity uh, wake me up, help me pick up my phone, sorry to Jackie for interrupting me while I'm talking to you, that's it A little rude, but you know she has flaws.

And so, yes, thank you Lord Jesus, name, amen.