Me: Stop bossing your brother.

Child: I’m not bossing him, I’m telling him!

Oh, of course. So sorry.

We’re still working on teamwork, teaching our kids to be encouragers instead of critics, and to get the plank out of their own eyes and mind their own business. It’s hard to model this as a mom because, well, I’m bossing them about not bossing each other. After almost fourteen years of parenthood, I’m still learning when to step back – to wait before interfering, intervening, stepping in, or advising, and just let them have at each other. (Also known as “taking it outside.”)

I mean, teaching them to problem-solve and work through conflict. Yeah, that’s it.

It happens, though, when the Spirit takes over the rooms of our house and we step into our calling. It’s dangerous. It gets crowded with growing pains. It might wreck any preconceived notion we ever had about what our lives might look like.

“Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

– C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Sometimes the unexpected happens, and sometimes we have a hard time getting along with each other.

Frustration and bickering can bluster the day away, and criticism chills in hearts that should love each other. Maybe we just want to give the answer and fix things quickly. Or, maybe we want to be seen as someone who has all the answers, overflowing with unwanted advice and unsought counsel. Sometimes it’s out of fear or lack of control, but more often it’s from insecurity or pride, which are just different sides of the same coin. That person is doing things differently than I would do them. I would never do it that way. Since they are not doing things the way I would do them, they must need my input.

So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.

– Philippians 2:1-4

In nothing is the power of the dark lord more clearly shown than in the estrangement that divides all who still oppose him.

– J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

One of the slimiest tricks of the enemy is getting us — kids and adults — to attack each other with discouragement, misunderstanding, ignorant judgment, or anger. He’s constantly on the lookout to divide and conquer God’s people so we will take each other out, and when we fall for it, we all lose.

Anytime someone asks what the greatest difference in our life is, my #1 answer is church. That is what we gave up in order to answer the call to adopt. It is also what I hear over and over again from families….church is what they miss the most. It is very sad that the one place/group of people that should be the greatest support and most welcoming place is the one we’re often isolated from the most.

– anonymous adoptive mom

A friend of mine wrote that, and they are hard words to read. So much is at stake.

We’re made to win this, though. As an adoptive family working through attachment issues, we’re learning to live this daily:

We look at our fellow men far too much from the standpoint of our own prejudices. They may be wrong, they may have their faults and foibles, they may call out all the meanest and most hateful in us. But they are not all wrong; they have their virtues, and when they excite our bad passions by their own, they may be as ashamed and sorry as we are irritated. And I think some of the best, most contrite, most useful of men and women, whose prayers prevail with God and bring down blessings into the homes in which they dwell, often possess unlovely traits that furnish them with their best discipline. The very fact that they are ashamed of themselves drives them to God; they feel safe in His presence. And while they lie in the very dust of self-confusion at His feet, they are dear to Him and have power with Him.

– Elizabeth Prentiss, Stepping Heavenward

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name.

– Philippians 2:5-9

We must be savvy…and be kind, not forgetting that we’re on the same side.

God, I’m praying tonight for protection over relationships — in families, in friendships, in work and ministry, that we would be so secure in Your love for us that we wouldn’t be insecure in our love for each other. We pray for an increase in unity, and conviction over divisiveness and friendly fire. Forgive us for being arrogant, insensitive, and critical. Help us to know how to support, how to ask, how to serve, how to encourage. 

Heaps of grace on each of us, to each other. The battle is won when we have each other’s back.

This is day 28 of Without Ceasing: 31 Days of Relentless Prayer. Find the other posts here. To get new posts right in your inbox, subscribe here.