Our home internet connection is a fickle and undependable thing. You can only imagine the state of our wifi network. My iPhone needs to update apps at least once a day (yet another sign that I should delete a few, if you ask my husband), which is usually an exercise in frustration.

Crazy as it sounds, God used something as simple as app updates to remind me of a valuable rule of parenting: persistence.

Typically when my apps start to update a message pops up and says Unable to Download Application: Done or Retry? I always hit Done.

If it didn’t work the first time, why would it work the second?

After two weeks trying to update the same app, I finally hit the Retry button. That didn’t work so I hit it again. And again. And again. Until it finished.

You know what? Each time I hit retry, the download didn’t really start over. The status bar jumped to the point it had reached the last time and started from there. Every time it went a little further until finally the download was complete.

This taught me one thing and reminded me of another: I can be more stubborn than my internet connection, and sometimes even if you don’t immediately achieve your desired end result, something is still being accomplished.

See, I’ve been frustrated in the parenting department lately. Are my kids listening to me? Sometimes it feels like I’m talking to the proverbial brick wall.

If you’re a parent, you can probably relate.

The app update lesson made me think of these wise words in Deuteronomy:

Therefore shall ye lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes.

And ye shall teach them your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.

And thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thine house, and upon thy gates:

That your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, in the land which the Lord sware unto your fathers to give them, as the days of heaven upon the earth.

~Deuteronomy 11:18-21

If God believed your children were going to absorb all the valuable lessons he wants you to teach them on the first or second try, he wouldn’t tell you to speak of them all the time (when you sit, walk, lie down, and rise up) or to write them upon the door posts and gates of your house.

Your kids may not want to hear you speak the same lessons over and over, but they need you to be consistent. They need to know that absolute truth exists and that you believe in it absolutely.

The world will hand them situational ethics, so you must teach ethics that stand up in hard situations. Be a safe place for them to test ideas and see if they hold water, but don’t be afraid to speak truth.

“Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” ~Isaiah 5:20

I remember a conversation with my father when I was in my mid-twenties. I told him my position on a political issue, something that I thought sounded good, that I felt I could support. His calm reply spurred me to ask more questions until I realized that I’d accepted face value without researching implications, taken a stand without understanding.

You’re never too old to learn a lesson from your parents.

I remember things I believed as a teen, like “Who cares what anyone else thinks if I know I’m right?” Children can be foolish and stubborn. I was. I bet you were, too.

You aren’t failing if your kids aren’t perfect. Give them the same grace that your heavenly Father gives you. Give yourself some grace, too. Everyone else’s children aren’t perfect, either.

So what’s a weary mom to do? Be persistent and consistent and pray that your children will come to know truth, as you dare to speak it and lay its foundation one day at a time. Hang in there.

Do you feel like you just keep hitting Retry? How can we pray for you in your parenting today?

{Please click over to my blog for a downloadable desktop calendar for July!}

by Dawn Camp, My Home Sweet Home

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