Re-thinking Re-learning

There are certain life lessons that I need to relearn over and over again. It's frustrating. I feel stuck in a rut, spinning my wheels on the road to personal development and Christian growth. I'm embarrassed by my thickheadedness, my lack of progress. I imagine God as a long-suffering schoolteacher, sighing and saying, Didn't we already cover this material? We had a whole unit on this last year.

Case in point: I was thinking this morning about my son's difficulty understanding that my love for him transcends his behavior and accomplishments. He tries hard to please me and feels terrible after misbehaving. He craves my praise for perfect math scores, completed projects, good penmanship, beautiful drawings, well-made beds, fast running, clever invention ideas. He even feels the need to confess to me his wrong-doings, even if they don't relate to me, even after making proper amends, and even though we've talked many times about God's freely-given forgiveness upon our confession to Him.

Yes, this transparency can be reassuring. I often know exactly what he is thinking and how he behaved at school. But it's uncomfortable to have that sort of power in his life and to realize that my imperfect parenting can have potentially devastating effects on his psyche.

Why does he crave my approval? I realize it's partly my fault: his behavior -- good or bad -- and his accomplishments are what I comment on most often. They are tangible and visible and are often windows to his soul and mind, which are what I really love. I love my son for who he is, not what he does.

I sat on the couch this morning after doing my devotions and tried to assess whether I've been doing a good job of getting this point across to my son. Why does he still crave my approval? I've told him many times "I love you for who you are, not what you do", so what more can I do? Are my actions or words are sending a different and wrong message? What must I do to get him past this?

Then it struck me: that's exactly what God is trying to teach me. Again and again, I worry that I'm not accomplishing enough in my life, that I'm not bearing enough spiritual fruit or using my gifts properly, that I'm not making decent time on the road of life. But God doesn't love me for what meager ways I serve Him or for what legacy I might leave on this earth. He loves me for who I am regardless of what I accomplish or how I behave.  I need to learn the very lesson I'm trying to teach my son.

But why did this thought strike me as being so new, so important? I've already had an in-depth lesson -- a whole unit of lessons -- on this very topic. Let's go back a mere nine months ago and there it is: a lesson well-learned during chemotherapy about how God loves me even when I'm stuck on the couch in extreme, drug-induced exhaustion, unable to serve my family or work or do much more than stare ahead at some mindless television program. I even wrote a devotion for MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers, International) on this very topic. How hypocritical to have written about an important lesson learned, only to find myself struggling with the same concept less than a year later. I must not have properly learned, since here I am again. The disappointed teacher in my mind crosses off the A+ on my paper and writes a big red F for failure.

I know this mental image is wrong. God is not a strict schoolteacher grading my performance. I want to develop a new, more godly attitude toward this purported failure, this spinning of my wheels. I can see how God can use my need to relearn as a way to continue His good work in me. Here are some thoughts to incorporate into a new attitude:

1. The need to re-learn is a lesson in humility. I can use each lesson to remind myself that I am a sinner doing what sinners do: sinning. I need God constantly, I am not ever going to outgrow my need for Him.
2. My re-visited lessons are not the same every time, not like a child's board game where an unlucky spin of the wheel takes you back to the first square. Each lesson builds on the foundation laid with the others. A lesson re-visited is a signpost pointing back to God's faithfulness along the road. I look back and see that God has been patiently paving my road with His patience and goodness, and He will continue to do so along the road ahead.
3. I need to think of re-visited lessons not as ruts but as themes. Just as a well-written book has themes, so can a well-lived life. A theme is meant to be revisited over time and in a variety of different ways. One of my life themes is that God loves me regardless of what I accomplish. He is developing this theme and building on this theme in rich and varied ways through my life experiences. My legacy can be a record of His patient faithfulness to a stumbling soul.

When my son gets home from school this afternoon, I will tell him again how much I love him, regardless of what he accomplished or how he behaved today. I will try to tell him this every day, to make it a theme in our relationship and to use it to point him toward our God who loves us perfectly: who is able to forgive the same sin over and over again and re-teach the same lesson over and over again. I will continue to monitor my imperfect parenting and to gently point my son toward God (not mom), but I will not look for proof of progress; I will not expect my son to "accomplish" in this lesson. Instead, I will strive to reflect God's patience by a willingness to revisit lessons for my son in unconditional love.