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TranscriptIntroduction
I’m so glad you’re choosing to invest this time with me. God’s Word has everything we need for life and godliness in our parenting, so as I study to create these episodes, I am being convicted and sharpened and equipped and challenged, and then I get to share with you what I’ve learned and how I’m growing. It’s an honor and a privilege and a joy to do this from week to week.
I pray that this new series is a blessing and challenge for you. I pray that God’s Word will open your eyes to how you can better worship the Lord through your parenting and—consequently—help your children worship God better in their lives. If you’re new to the show, I hope you will subscribe to the podcast, grow from the material, share it with your friends, and even leave a review on your preferred podcast app. And all of you should go the description of this episode in your app (or visit TruthLoveParent.com) to access today’s free episode notes, transcript, and the related resources I frequently mention throughout the episode. To that point, I have some great gifts for you today I encourage you to take advantage of and consume. So, with that foundation laid, let’s jump into our topic for today: Parenting Sorrowing Children, Part 1 | The Cause of Sorrow. Topic
We can’t help our children navigate their sorrow to the glory of God if we and they don’t even know what sorrow is, from where it grows, and how God would have us think about it.
However, if you’ve never heard our previous series on emotions, then the foundation we would need to lay today is just too big. So, I’m going to do my best to explain the main pillar truths we absolutely need to understand, and then hook you up with a free resource where you can lay the rest of the biblical foundation you need concerning sorrow and our responsibilities in it. Therefore, let’s start with . . . 1. A Review of Emotional Descriptions and Dysfunctions A. A Secular Description of Emotions Modern psychiatrists and therapists believe that there are three parts to any emotion. First, there is an external subjective experience that creates, second, an internal physiological response, that results in, third, and an external behavior. The subjective experience may be someone calling me a mean name, the internal physiological response could be that I feel angry, and then the external behavior might be that I cry or call them a meaner name or punch them in the eye. However, that is not a biblically scientific understanding of emotions. B. A Biblically Accurate Scientific Description First, the originating subjective experience can be either external or internal or both. Emotions are not caused solely by external stimuli. Second, we often have an internal physiological response to the stimuli. This is what we call a “pure emotion.” Emotions and feelings are primarily purely biological chemical reactions. But here’s where the world really messes up. That subjective stimuli doesn’t cause all the same feelings in everyone. In fact, the same chemical reactions don’t always cause the same feeling in the same person. Why is that? Third, there is an internal mental (spiritual) response by which we seek to understand and interpret the physiological response. I can’t go into any more detail about this, but I have a bunch of resources for you which do. And, finally, after the stimulus and the physiological response and the interpretation of that response, I then will have an external (on internal) behavioral response. And then it’s important to remember that the resulting external or internal behavioral response will likely produce their own subsequent internal physiological responses to the previous 4 steps. Now, if you’re feeling overwhelmed because this is the first time you’re hearing anything like this, please go to the description of this episode because I have a link for you there that will allow you to access a bunch of resources called the Doctrine of Emotions. It normally costs $25, but if you use today’s link, it will be free to you. Not only does it have a bunch of episodes about parenting your kids through their emotions, but it also has audio recordings of the various workshops I’ve taught for the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors on the topic of emotions. It will include the session I did this past year about counseling sorrowing children. You will also find radio interviews I’ve done on the topic, as well as 4 sessions from our “Suffering Well” curriculum on sorrow, fear, anger, and depression, as well as a discussion about children and shame. And all of that is free to you when you create a free account on the Evermind App using the link in the description of today’s episode. If you already have an account on the Evermind App, the link will simply add it to your app. One of the key pillars to being able to parent our kinds when they are sorrowing is that we need to understand how God created our emotions to work. We need to understand that—most of the time—we have control over our emotions and how we feel. But the second pillar we need for this discussion is . . . 2. An Understanding of the Nature of Sorrow Again, we’re going to have to be briefer than I’d like to be with this, so that’s why I have another offer for you. I mentioned the Suffering Well Online Course available in the Evermind App. Well, if you use the link in the description of today’s episode, you can access that material at 50% off the regular price. The Suffering Well Online Course is a 12 part group counseling session where we discuss what the Bible says about what suffering is, why we suffer, and who suffers. We then have 8 session on practical suffering where we get super relevant and daily practical about how we are to suffer well. And then we end with an encouraging study concerning suffering from the book of I Peter. And you can gain access to all of that for 50% off the normal cost. But in order to move on with our discussion today, we need to zoom in on what suffering really is. So . . . A. What is sorrow? To put it simply, sorrow is a form of suffering. Generally speaking, when people are suffering, they are experiencing one of four emotions. When they suffer, they sorrow, they fear, they feel anger, and they depress. Not everyone experiences all of these in their lives, and not everyone experiences them consistently or in the same ways. And, yes, sorrow and depression are unique concepts though they are related to each other, and fear includes anxiety, worry, and the like. So, if your child is sorrowing, we could more generally recognize that they are suffering for some reason. Therefore, we need to ask, what causes people to suffer? Suffering is always a result of having lost something. This something can be anything tangible or intangible. It can be health, money, relationships, positions such as a work title or simply popularity in a peer group, dreams, opportunities, and even life. Suffering is always a result of loss. No one is suffering who has everything he wants. No one is suffering who hasn’t lost something they believe they need or only just want. Therefore, if your children are sorrowing, they’re suffering, and if they’re suffering, they’ve either lost something or believe they’ve lost something. Now, this is where I want to remind you to check out the Doctrine of Emotion, and—more specifically—the workshop I conducted called Counseling Sorrowing Children. That is a one hour session where I discuss this idea as well as the various ways that people sorrow. Over the course of this series, we are going to dive much deeper than I did in the workshop as we consider the various forms of sorrow and how to parent our kids through it. But I won’t spend the same amount of time on these introductory ideas as I did in the workshop. Perhaps listening to that session before digging deeper into this series will equip you to utilize the information in this series better. Okay, so now we need to understand that nature of loss. We can’t understand sorrow until we understand loss. There are 3 types of loss that you and your children experience in this life. B. Practical Loss The best biblical example of this comes from the book of Job. Job lost his possessions, his family, and his health. Those losses were the result of living in a cursed world, other people’s sin, and—unique to Job—the direct demonic attack of the Devil. But Paul also exemplifies practical loss in many ways. Consider all the times he was shipwrecked and hungry and persecuted. Romans 1:13 tells us, “Often I have planned to come to you (and have been prevented so far).” He lost various opportunities to visit the Christians in Rome. The parables from Luke 15 concerning the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and Lost Son all exemplify various kinds of practical losses. The key thing to remember is that practical losses are real. They’re actual. They are things that have truly been lost. And I would argue that they’re things that we don’t want to lose. No one complains when their immune system fights off a virus that they lost the opportunity to be sick. No one finding out the a tornado missed their house laments losing the chance to be homeless. But though practical loss should be the main cause of sorrow, we must consider . . . C. Potential Loss Mark 2:22 reads, “No one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost and the skins as well; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins.” If I were to put new wine into an old wineskin, it’s possible that the wineskin will hold the wine until it’s drunk. But it’s also possible that it might break and the wine be wasted. Well, sometimes people worry about something that might happen, but hasn’t happened—something that may not actually, practically ever happen. But that doesn’t stop them from worrying. Potential losses are the things we’ve haven’t yet lost, but which we believe we may lose. Often, there’s a sense of imminence to that loss . . . it could happen at any moment. And often we conclude that just because it “can happen” that it “will happen,” and we—consequently—experience the same level of sorrow that we would had we practically lost it. I Corinthians 3:15 presents a future day we will all one day face, “If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.” Should we be preparing for that day? Should we be doing everything we can to avoid those potential losses? Yes! But should we act as if the loss is already a foregone conclusion? No. If we’re going to sorrow over a loss, it should be a practical loss. However, sometimes potential losses can tempt us to respond incorrectly. But neither of these is as dangerous as the last category of loss. D. Perceived Loss Practical loss has happened, potential loss may happen, but perceived loss hasn’t happened, it isn’t even going to potentially happen, but we believe that it has. In Genesis 37, Abraham’s sons are trying to convince him that his favorite son, Joseph, is dead. By the way, we have an episode called A Parenting Game You Absolutely Must Not Play. Pease check it out. Anyway, in verse 33, we read, “And he identified it and said, ‘It is my son’s robe. A fierce animal has devoured him. Joseph is without doubt torn to pieces.’” Joseph was lost to him because he was sold into slavery. But Abraham convinced himself that Joseph was dead. He mourned for him instead of traveling to Egypt to find his son. He believed his son was dead even though it wasn’t true. In Matthew 14, Peter has stepped out of his boat in the middle of a storm and was walking on the water toward Jesus. But in verse 30 we read, “But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, ‘Lord, save me.’” Was Peter really, practically in danger from the wind and water? No. Was he potentially in danger from the wind and water? No. But that didn’t stop him from believing he was. What he was most in danger from was his own lack of faith. I would love to talk more about this, but we must move on. So, don’t forget that you can not only receive 50% off the Suffering Well Online Course, but you can also access—for free—The Doctrine of Emotion in order to better understand these biblical truths. Also, before we move on to our final point, Parenting Strategies for Sorrowing Children, I want to invite you to pick up a copy of my new book, Quit: How to Stop Family Strife for Good. You can get it from Amazon for a limited time for only $10. Please get yourself a copy because your family does have strife, and God’s Word has the Cure your family needs. Okay, in light of how emotions work and what causes sorrow, let’s talk about . . . 3. Parenting Strategies for Sorrowing Children I’m going to fly through these first few points without too much discussion because we don’t have time to dive into each one for full understanding. But—never fear—I cover all of this information in the Suffering Well material on the Evermind App. So, if you agree that this is necessary for helping your children, you have all the depth you need. Second, the following 4 points and the 16 sub-points should be things we’re teaching our kids before, during, and after their bouts with sorrow. We need to preemptively help them understand these truths, we need to remind them of them when they’re suffering, and we need to review these glorious realities when they’ve come out the other side. A. You must teach your children about the God of suffering and emotions. Too often we don’t like talking about the “ugly” realities of life . . . like suffering. Sometimes we forget because we’re not really experiencing that much suffering. But the Scriptures have so much to say about suffering, and emotions are things we feel nearly every moment of every day, we absolutely would be wise to teach them. But more importantly than all of that, we need to understand the God Who sovereignly works through it all. First, our families needs to understand that God and His Word are where we find comfort and hope all of the time, but especially when we’re suffering. Second, we need to teach our kids that God and His Word are where we find answers to the “why?” of our suffering. Not only does the Scripture help us understand from where suffering and emotions come, but It provides the ever more important answer to why emotions are what they are and why suffering exists in this world. It shows us what God desires to do in our suffering. And, of course, we all need to know what the Bible says about the God of sorrow in particular. Jesus was referred to as “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” So, we need to teach our children about the God of suffering and emotions, but . . . B. You must teach your children the general truths of suffering. In the Suffering Well course I open the Scriptures to reveal the following truths: the Inevitability of Suffering, the Contagion of Suffering, the Subjectivity of Suffering, the Danger of Comparison in Suffering, and the Relationship between Suffering and Loss. I could dedicate a whole series to some of these points, and all of them are very important for our kids to understand. C. You must teach your children the roots of suffering. Practical loss is always rooted in three things: we suffer because we live in a cursed world, we sometimes suffer because of demonic attack, and we definitely suffer because we’re experiencing the consequences of our sinful choices. But not only should our kids understand suffering, sorrow, and emotions in general, they also need to understand their own unique responses to suffering. D. You must teach your children how they suffer. In the Suffering Well material I talk about the General, the Pacifist, the Mercenary, the Dodger, and the Soldier to illustrate the 5 ways that people usually respond to suffering. I can’t tell you how valuable it is to teach my children these truths. Then when they’re experiencing sorrow, not only have they been prepared, but we can review these truths instead of learning them fresh in the middle of suffering. All of these truths are beautiful touchstones back to which we can point. So, those are the things we need to teach them preemptively, we can teach them in the middle of the difficulty, and which we should review as they come out the other side. But even if I’ve thoroughly equipped my kids with this information, there are still three important steps I need to work through with my kids . . . During the Sorrow A. Teach your children to identify the loss. Even if you know what was lost (ex: a girlfriend or boyfriend, a job, a grade, perhaps even the death of a parent), ask questions to identify as many of the felt losses as possible. Quite often what appears like the “obvious loss” is affecting the child far less than what we might consider “secondary losses.” Ex: A child may be sad their father died, but they’re actually more angry that he broke his promise to walk her down the aisle. When our kids recognize that their sorrow is a result of suffering and their suffering is a result of loss, it will be key to meditate on the obvious and less-than-obvious-losses. Now, if you listen to the Counseling Sorrowing Children workshop I did for ACBC which is included in The Doctrine of Emotions material, you will hear me reference one of the plenary sessions where Dale Johnson encouraged us to weep with those who weep. That truth comes from Romans 12:15. I Corinthians 12:26 puts it this way, “If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.” But there’s a really important step that must be taken before we can truly and righteously before God weep with those who weep. If you see someone sitting on a park bench, and they are crying their eyes out, it’s natural to feel for that person, to want to identify what’s wrong and see how you can help. If it’s a friend, you feel all of this even more so. But what if your best friend showed up at your house in deep sorrow and crying uncontrollably. You might wrap your arms around her and hold her and tell her it will be alright and perhaps even cry at the desperate display of your friend. But of course, you’re still curious, so you ask, “What happened?” And she says, “My husband just died.” Well, now you’re overcome with sorrow yourself because you knew her husband, and you’re trying to imagine all of the ways that your friend’s life is being turned upside down. But then, through the occasional sob, you hear your friend say that she’s sad because the police are searching for her because she just murdered her husband. Yeah. That was jolting wasn’t it? It’s interesting how you’re not too interested in weeping with her in her current situation. In fact, if you’re a good friend, you’re going to contact the police and try to keep her occupied until they arrive. Now, I know that’s an extreme example, but follow me here. A child might be crying about the bad grade she received, but she’s only crying because she hates her teacher, so is the Scripture encouraging us to arbitrarily cry with her even though the real reason she’s crying is her own unloving, foolish, selfishness? Most parents already do this when their kids skin their knees. We realize there’s a legitimate cry of pain, but there is also the fake cry of attention-seeking. We cry with them for the first, but we calmly tell them to settle down with the second. All of these observations about weeping with those who weep are a preface to the next absolutely vital point. B. Teach your children to identify the kind of loss. Is your child experiencing the acceptable sorrow of someone who has experienced practical loss? Has your child lost his father? Then, yes, we should be there to weep with them and help them navigate that sorrow to God’s glory. But what if they’re sorrowing as if he were actually dead simply because he’s flying on a business trip and your child is scared because they’ve heard about all the plane crashes recently. So, your child is balling uncontrollably as if his father were actually dead simply because the child is convinced there’s a potential his father’s plane might crash? Should we be weeping with our son in that moment. No, we should not. We should be helping him focus on truth. First, dad’s not dead. Second, it’s not a forgone conclusion that his plane will have any issues. Third, we need to talk about the love, sovereignty, and trustworthiness of God. And this is even more necessary if your child is carrying on not because of the potential of his father dying, but if were convinced his father were dead despite evidence to support it. Therefore, in addition to preparing them to understand sorrow and respond to it correctly, we need to identify the loss as well as the kind of loss. There is an appropriate sorrow for potential loss, but it’s not the same as practical loss. And there is never an appropriate sorrow for perceived loss as it’s not really lost in the first place. But, finally . . . C. Teach your children to identify the type of sorrow being experienced. Okay, so there are kinds of loss and kinds of sorrow. “Wow, Aaron, this seems overly complicated. I thought when people cried, they were just sad, but now I need to not only identify why they’re sad, but also how they’re sad?” Yes, my friends, that is correct. I have witnessed people cry over truly wicked things. They cry when they’re told they can’t murder their unborn child. I myself have wept for nothing more than pride and selfishness. Think about Elijah. After defeating the prophets of Baal and witnessing the omnipotence of God, Jezebel puts out a death warrant for him, and he runs away to a river and descends into depression. But he did so because he was believing a lie. What followed was a process that lasted over a month, involved eating and napping, but also fasting and tons of travel, as well as God speaking directly to him before Elijah understood that his sorrow was not pleasing to the Lord. Conclusion
“Okay, Aaron. I see what you’re saying. So, what are the different types of sorrow?”
Well, that’s an amazing question, and the rest of this series is going to step through each kind of sorrow and give you counsel for how you can biblically parent your child through it because as your children have a biblical understanding of loss, suffering, emotions in general, and sorrow in particular, they can navigate it to the glory of God. And—if you haven’t noticed—this advice isn’t only child-specific. These truths are the same ones we need to know and believe to navigate sorrow to the glory of God and Suffer Well for His pleasure. Now, as you wait patiently for the next 5 episodes to come out, please take advantage of your free access to The Doctrine of Emotions material on the Evermind App. And while you’re there you might as well get your 50% off the Suffering Well Online Course—also on the app. But remember, you can only get these discounts by clicking the links in the description of today’s episode. And please, please, please, purchase your copy of "Quit: How to Stop Family Strife for Good.” Buy one for yourself, buy one for everyone in your small group, buy a box of them for your church library. This is a resource that can radically impact your families in life-altering ways. Also, please share this episode so other dads and moms can learn how to parent their sorrowing children, and—lastly—never hesitate to email us at [email protected] or leave a voicemail at (828) 423-0894 if there’s any way our biblical counselors can partner with you to address your individualized needs. I look forward to meeting with you next time when we unpack the concept of Daily Sorrow and how you can parent your kids through it. I’ll see you then.
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