Hate Sin

Sloan, my wonderful, beautiful, spectacular five-year-old, is also a bit of a toot these days. Man, he's giving us a run for our money. The only thing I take comfort in is the fact that he must know that there is nothing on this earth that he could ever do to make us stop loving him, because he's so difficult right now that some days all I have to lean on are my deepest feelings of motherly love (but I don't always like him). We feel like we are in a spiritual battle with him right now. He's so close to salvation. He's asking a lot of questions, but isn't ready to accept Christ just yet. I asked him the other day after a particularly poignant conversation, if he wanted to pray and ask Jesus into his heart. Without missing a beat he replied, "No, not today." The boy knows what he wants. So anyway, satan is digging at his little spirit, but Lee and I will not give up this fight. There are some days when I would like to throw the towel in and say, "Fine. You win. I'm done." But that's not an option. My son's eternal soul is so desperately important to me and so I will stay on my knees and I will continue to beg the Lord to give me the strength, grace, peace and patience to parent him. And I am trusting that the Lord will show me some fruit from these early years of toil. Parenting is hard!

There are, however, a few moments where Sloan's little attitude bring on a welcomed bit of comic relief. One of the things we're working on is curbing his use of the word hate. This is a new thing that sprung up lately. "I hate this food." "I hate our house," etc...I had been telling him that hate is too strong of a word and we shouldn't use it, but finally decided that I needed to give him something to work with so the other day I told him he was allowed to hate only one thing, and he could say the word hate only in this context. He is allowed to hate sin. So, this morning when I told him to get dressed, he immediately fell into the whining and complaining. I quickly cut him off and told him to just get dressed. He stomped into his room and took his jammy shirt off and threw it on the ground then shouted at the top of his lungs, "I HATE SIN!!!"

Me too, little buddy. Me too.