Conversations at Bedtime

In my last blog post, I described some of the reasons why we choose to have a regular reading time. One of those reasons is because of the opportunity that it provides to slow down and have heart-level discussions without feeling any urgency to keep up with the busyness of life that so often goes along with living in a house filled with so many young children.

The conversations that we have often stem from the reading that has just occurred, but not always. This particular night, my 6-year-old son had a question for me. “Mom, I wanted to ask you about something. Why do you think it is that when I am around our family I act one way, but when I am around other people then I act a lot nicer?”

“Why do you think?” I asked him in response.

“I think that I want other people to like me and to think that I am never mean.”

I nodded and then asked him another question, “Do you think that you are being the real you with your family or with your friends?”

“Well…I think with my family because then I don’t try to be something that I’m not.”

I sure could relate to his honest confession. I spoke from personal experience when I said, “You’re right. The real you is not always loving, even though you want other people to think you are. Did you know that when you pretend to be nice so that your friends will like you, you are not being loving to them either? You are lying to them about who you really are. You want them to like you and so you act in the way that you think they want you to act. That is very self-centered. You are only thinking about how they can make you feel special and so you lie to them so that they will like you.”

I have been guilty of doing this very thing myself – putting on a false personality and pretending to be someone other than who I am, someone who I think will be more likeable to others. In reality what I was doing was lying to people and using them to try and meet my own needs for unconditional love and acceptance.

But I had hope for my son, “That is not how God created you to be. He created you to be real with everyone, not just your family. And He also created you to love just like He loves. When you don’t love your family, you aren’t being the boy He created you to be. When you pretend that you are nice, even when you really are unloving to us at home, you aren’t being the boy that He created you to be then either. God doesn’t want you to pretend anymore. He wants to change your heart so that you become the real boy that He created you to be.”

“Well, I try to love, but I keep doing unloving things. I mess up every single time. I can’t ever love like that.”

“You’re right, not when you’re trying to be loving on your own. But why did Jesus die on the cross?”

“To take away my sins.”

“Yes, you aren’t strong enough to stop sinning on your own. I want you to think of one way that you sin, one way that you are unloving to your family.”

“Sometimes I get really angry with my brothers and I want to kick them.”

“Okay, that’s a good example. When Jesus died on the cross, He made it possible for you to no longer be controlled by your anger. If you really want Him to take away your sin of being angry at your brothers, then you have to cooperate with Him. Do you know what I mean by that?”

“No.”

“You already know that the Holy Spirit is living inside of you and that He speaks to you through your conscience. He reminds you when you are being unloving and He also reminds you of ways that you can show love. To cooperate with Him, you must listen to your conscience and obey. But you usually won’t feel like obeying, and that is when you need to cry out to the Lord for His strength to obey. When we don’t cry out to the Lord and choose to ignore what He is telling us to do, then we have a yucky feeling in our heart – we feel guilty.”

Now my son was confused, “But why does God make me feel guilty? I thought He loved me.”

“God lets you feel guilty,” I explained, “ because He loves you so much that He doesn’t want your relationships to stay broken. Whenever you feel that guilt, it is to remind you that you have been unloving and that you need to make things right with one of us or with God. Do you know how to make things right?”

“I know, Mom. It means I need to repent.” We had talked many times before about what true repentance looked like – that true repentance occurs when a person realizes how much he has hurt someone else by his unloving ways, and when he decides he doesn’t ever want to hurt that person like that again.

Just then we heard the sound of the front door opening, signaling Grandma’s late arrival from out of town. I knew that my conversation with that son was over when he ran from the room to greet his Grandma. But his older brother didn’t follow him out. Instead he approached me and said, “Mom, there is something that I need to tell you…”

To be continued.

~Christi Faagau