The Thorn of Parenting
“My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness… For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
— 2 Corinthians 12:9–10 (NKJV)
Parenting will make you confront the way you were raised, the things you lacked, and the things you promised yourself you would never repeat. It is one of the most delicate assignments God gives, and it comes with a thorn that keeps you dependent on Him.
Some thorns show up through the decisions your children make, the choices you warned them about and the habits you prayed they would break. There are moments when you can see the outcome long before they do, but they still choose the path you hoped they would avoid. And you have to watch it unfold, knowing you couldnt make the decision for them.
Others show up through the struggles they face, watching them wrestle with rejection and the feeling of being shut out, ignored, and forgotten. It is seeing them reach out, hoping for a connection, and instead being met with silence, inconsistency, disappointment, and broken promises. It is watching them long for something they deserve and never receive it, and you feel the weight of that right along with them.
And then there is the thorn that shows up in their behavior, the anger, the lashing out, the attitude, and the isolation. These are all the ways their hurt starts speaking for them when they cannot find the words.
The enemy will use this parenting thorn to try to pull you out of character, push your emotions to the edge, and try to get you to react out of frustration instead of responding with the patience God is growing in you. He will try to provoke you back into the version of yourself God has been healing you away from because he knows the rejection your child feels stirs up triggers and old wounds inside of you.
He knows the hurt your child carries awakens that instinct in you to protect, defend, and fight at all costs. And he will encourage the very reaction that God is teaching you to rise above, especially when you are watching your child keep trying for something you already know will end the same way every time.
And that in itself is its own thorn. It is the ache of seeing them hope again, reach out again, open their heart again, only to be met with the same silence, the same inconsistency, the same disappointment and the same broken promises. You can feel the outcome before it even arrives, and yet you have to stand there and let it play out.
Everything in you wants to step in and protect them from the impact you already see coming. Everything in you wants to force your hand, fix it, shield them, or speak up in a way that makes the truth undeniable. But God will not let you. He forces you to stand still and be quiet, reminding you that the battle is not yours but His.
In the places you cannot see, in the moments you cannot control, and in the parts of your child’s journey that you wish you could rewrite, God is working. He is working in the tension between what you want to protect them from and what He needs them to walk through. He is working in the places where you feel helpless and in the places where you feel torn between stepping in and stepping back. He is working in you just as much as He is working in your child.
This thorn becomes the moment where God teaches you how to love and pray them through it. How to support them without controlling them, how to guide them without forcing them, and how to trust Him with the outcomes you have no control over.
It becomes the place where Gods grace steps in and softens the parts of you that used to react. It becomes the reminder that you cannot protect them from every disappointment, but you can cover them in prayer. You cannot stop them from learning hard lessons, but you can stand beside them while they do.
The thorn may stay for a season, but so does His grace to endure it. And in the end, it reminds you that parenting was never meant to be done in your own strength, but in His.
