Directions

On Parents and Children

I’ve learned something over the years, something that doesn’t show up on a checklist, and certainly not in any operations manual.

You can teach your children.

You can show them how to live, how to decide, how to act, what to say.You can repeat yourself—sometimes more than you planned to, and sometimes more than they wanted to hear. (And yes, they did hear you, even when they perfected the fine art of selective listening.)

You can model patience.You can demonstrate kindness.You can even throw in a little wisdom when the moment opens the door just enough to let it in.

But in the end, they will live their own lives.

They will make their own plans. They will follow roads you didn’t map out. They will choose paths that make you proud, and, at times, paths that make you pray a little harder—and maybe a little FASTER.

And somewhere in that holy tension between guidance and release, a quiet truth settles in:

Your job was never to control their lives. It was to influence their direction.

Because in every step they take—whether steady or uncertain, your imprint goes with them.

Not just what you taught, but how you taught it.

The tone in your voice. The patience (or lack of it. We’re all still under construction). The way you handled pressure. The way they saw you treat other people when no one else was watching. The way you loved them on their best days and especially on their worst.

That’s what stays.

Long after the lectures fade, long after the curfews are forgotten, long after they insist they “figured it out on their own” (and you quietly smile, because you know better),

Your life becomes a compass they carry within them.

And here’s the grace in it: God never asked us to produce perfect children. He asked us to faithfully point them.

“Point your children in the right direction. When they’re old they won’t be lost.“ Proverbs 22:6 (MSG).

So we point. We guide. We pray.

And then we trust the One who loves them even more than we do.

Because in the end, the goal was never to keep them close to us, but to send them forward with something of heaven stitched into their hearts.

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A parent's quiet prayer:

Lord, help me to teach with patience, to lead with humility, and to love without condition.

Let my life speak louder than my words, and may what I leave behind in them be shaped by Your Truth and Your Grace.

And when I’m tempted to worry about every step they take, remind me of this one truth: You’re already there. Amen.

Copyright 2025; Revised April 2026; Gary Landerfelt; mypericope.com

(MSG)