Out of Control: When Children are Beyond Our Reach Podcast Episode

God is with me. That’s his greatest promise, isn’t it? That God says, “I will be with you,” and that if he’s with us, to also then be able to know he is with my child. I may not see my kid on the backside of the moon, but I can smile to think and say, “But Jesus is with my child on the backside of the moon.” 

That’s his promise. Welcome everyone to Breaking Bread, the podcast brought to you by Apostolic Christian Counseling and Family Services. Excellent as always to have you along. Craig Stickling is with me. Good to see you, Craig. Glad to be here, Matt. Warning here, I’m going to flatter you, but I feel like, Craig you do really well in this parenting space. 

And I feel like today’s topic has the opportunity to showcase that. And I’m excited about that because my intersection with you is on the parenting front. Yeah. Both as a coworker as well as a user. By the grace of God and believe half of what you hear, Matt. 

The proof is in the pudding, and so I’ve seen enough of the work that you do, Craig. You’ve made a career out of working with kids, both in the public school setting and now, but very much working with parents and kids. And this area of parenting is a super sacred space. 

Right? It’s not uncommon for us parents to freak out. We need a steady hand, and you’ve provided that for so many people and some perspective. So anyway, today’s topic, parenting kids around the backside of the moon, which we’re playing a little bit on an Artemis II theme here. So, for any geeks out there who were paying attention in April? Did you pay attention to that at all? Oh, not as much as my wife, but I loved the reminder of that story, Matt. Yeah. And it brought back some good lessons that I was able to hear and make this connection, which is just such a fascinating analogy to consider in our parenting realm.  

Yeah, I love it. So, for those who Artemis didn’t trip your fancy, it was a NASA mission to send four astronauts around the backside of the moon– … and then back home again– … in further preparation for a moon landing, very similar to the Apollo 8 mission. 

Yes. But basically, these four astronauts just get slung out in space, right? Yeah. And they travel around the backside of the moon, which is a really sacred time, a very intensive moment – the backside of the moon – for a lot of reasons. And then for that hopeful return. I was pretty enthralled by the whole thing and did find myself watching the whole thing unfold, which was really fun. 

Yeah. And it brings in that great picture of Houston or mission control, right? Because you have a mission control and you have a goal or desire. You know what the mission is, you know what the purpose is, and you know who’s going out, and you care about those people who are going out. 

Yeah. But you also know there’s this moment that they’re going to go around to the backside of the Moon, and we lose communication, we lose contact, we lose connection, we lose visual. And we lose one more C, Craig. Mission control loses control. Yeah. And that’s the fascinating thing, and so let’s make this connection to parenting, right? 

And really this is a metaphor that you use with parents. I’ve heard you mention on the backside of the Moon before the Artemis mission. So, this has been in your repertoire of models that you talk about when you’re parenting kids and those kids go around the backside of the Moon, lots of things can happen. 

But one of those I would think is you lose control and that helpless feeling is where parents are contacting you, right? And they’re making connections or saying, “Craig, I need some insight into this moment because it’s very much out of control.” 

Yeah. So, paint a picture of family systems. What are we talking about? Take the analogy down to the practical family. Help us see and connect with, “Oh, yeah, I understand that.” And at least initial analogies come up when something is amiss, something is not right with one of our kids. 

Our natural relationships, connections, conversations, the give and take of chores and duties and conversation, there’s a norm that operates within that, and our kids certainly have variations within that norm. But where sometimes I get a parent reaching out with a concern is all of a sudden, my normal way of communicating, connecting with my child is no longer working. 

They go into this silence mode. I don’t feel like I’m reaching them. They’re not connecting back to me. What I’m saying doesn’t seem to be getting through. In fact, it even seems to make things worse. Like you said, I’ve lost a sense of control. Yeah. There seems to be growing distance, and that’s where the panic sets in, right? 

This feeling that, “I am losing them.” Yeah. And sometimes we use that phrase. Yeah. “I’m losing them.” Yeah. It’s so hard. Are we? Yeah. That’s the question.  And I ponder that especially in early Apollo 8 when that first went around the backside, how many of them in Houston looked at each other and said, 

“What have we done?” Yeah. “Will we ever get them back? Is this a big mistake? Did we do the right thing?” Yeah. “Did we prepare enough? Did we plan enough? Did we present enough in them so that they’ll be able to make that curve and come back around?” And now we wait. Speak to parents, because I think that is a huge open question. 

And if parents look to fault or error or regret in some of these types of things, there’s no end to the list that we can write to say, no, I missed it in so many ways and there they go. Yeah. I’ve lost them. Yeah. How do you speak to parents in that? I find a little bit of comfort to think of the first mom and dad in the world, right? 

Adam and Eve. And I think about the first mom and dad, they had absolutely no distractions, none of all those other things. And you know what? Their kids struggle. And so, I remind myself that in a broken world, it’s not that I’m not going to disappoint my kids. Wow. That’s going to happen to some degree, but there’s a built-in grace that God pours into kids and also pours into us as moms and dads to recognize that he knows that gap. 

He knows our strengths and weaknesses. He knows what we’ll do well and pour in well. He knows the areas that we won’t. But he also knows what our kids will need, and somehow, just like on that mission control, he somehow is able to provide for that, fill into that, Matt. My brain exploded when you said the first couple, the first parents, as well as so many of the parents throughout the Scriptures. 

The story captured in so many family systems in the Scriptures is brokenness, isn’t it? Craig, one of the qualities that you possess, I think, in your interaction both with parents and with kids, has been an element of hope. And I can sense this as very germane to the way you think about life, the way you think about the parenting experience, and the way you think about the maturation of a child. 

I want you to speak to that hope because hope is what’s at crisis when a parent feels like they’re emotionally losing their child. Can you tease that out a little bit? What are you thinking about? What are you looking towards? How do you frame hope at this moment? And I’ll take that one step farther. Is hope that my child establishes or is able to accomplish this set of standards or expectations that I have for them? Is that where my hope resides? Or am I able to reframe that a bit and acknowledge that there’s a release piece in that. Oh, I can have expectations and that’s a good thing, yet also is my hope even more rooted in who do they become in Christ, and do they become who God has created them to be? 

Even if that’s a little bit different than my expectations. Sometimes we’re looking at the wrong thing as parents. Is that a good way to say it? Yeah. I look at it as if I might just over-fixate on one chapter. And the whole book is still there, and there are yet chapters to be written in my child’s life and right now I’m just stuck on chapter six, and I just cannot get past that. 

And sometimes we want to write chapter 12 as parents when we’re only on six. Yeah. That makes sense to me. And so, the hope piece in that, Matt, is struggles, challenges, and difficulties don’t mean that we’re not still on schedule. It doesn’t mean that I’m off the mission or that we’ve somehow been lost out in orbit and we’ve lost the whole thing. 

The struggles and challenges don’t mean that we’ve lost that hope. Are we measuring the right things? For example, to your point, if I’m measuring the struggles and the problems, you are helping us see that there might be more to measure. What would be some of those things we should measure? Growth, I think, is important to remember. That they are growing and that their learning curves might look different than mine, so growth in that sense. Where are they at with their ability to use the talents that they have? I may not agree and I may not like what they do, but are they trying to craft, explore, discover some of those things that they are or that they think they’re good at, right? 

I may be like, “I could care less if you are good at skateboarding,” or whatever you would use. But if that’s something that they’re really latched onto, then I’m able to say, “Okay, am I seeing their growth and energy and effort in that?” So that’s a piece of realigning a little bit of a total outcome to where they are at in just getting by for the season they’re in right now? 

And going back to our metaphor then, this idea of an orbit to come back, you really have a more holistic view of the trajectory of the child than just a straight line forever growing distance. Which is what parents often think, though. We go to the worst-case scenario, right? 

Yeah. It’s a forever extending straight line increasingly distant, but you see a potential arc. Yeah. And that’s really modeled nicely in some of the parenting seasons that we’ve talked about before, Matt. When our kids are born, we are just their servants. 

We’re keeping them alive; we’re feeding and changing them. There’s so much of that, and the next season is the discipline, instructional stage. We’re pouring a lot of boundaries and limits and that into their lives. And then we move into the mentoring a little bit. Okay, I’ve poured into you here pretty heavily for 10 or 12 years, and now I get to step back a little bit and see what you got out of what Mom and Dad have poured in? 

And so, you get to mentor that direction a little bit. And then the biggest arc, that coming back around the backside of the moon, the biggest stage, the biggest season we will have with our kids will be that friendship stage. I don’t have to be their servant. I don’t have to always be correcting, challenging, or instructing them. 

I even get to step back from mentoring. Now we are getting into that season after they come back around the moon, and they start to come back close into where we’re at in our solar system. I think that “come around” thing was one of the most exciting parts of watching the whole Artemis mission. 

Yeah. It just seems like the expectation was there, almost the bewilderment, almost the surprise that it was actually going to happen. Yeah. And indeed, it did, which was great to watch. What is your advice then for a parent’s posture when they are on the backside of the moon and communication is cut off with that larger orbital, hopeful perspective. Here’s what you can do because you can’t do much. Yeah. There’s certainly this pull to isolation if you’re in a struggle with one of your kids, and it seems like you look around and all the other families either at church or your connections seem to be going really well, and so there’s this isolation piece in that. 

And so, where we could find community would be within our church family. How do we get to step into that space for some of our families at church, and how can we do that? And how can we do that well? I think there’s a beautiful place for us to be able to step into that. I think you’re right on. In fact, it’s been my experience. I could list names of people who have been my voice when it can’t carry and have been my arms when I can’t reach. And they have been found in a community, right? Yeah. And we see how important that is. Craig, I’m not sure there’s a way to love another person and a parent more than loving them by loving their kids. 

Yeah. And a gift that flows within our church connections and networks and dynamics which is beautiful to have. When you’re having conversations with parents and children in this difficult place, parents feeling like they’re losing their children emotionally and like they’re on the backside of the moon, what are some of the things you talk about? Where are some of the places that hope is found? I think it’s important to remember that time and trust aren’t necessarily always going to be moving at the same rate. And that what feels like a long time doesn’t mean that there’s an erosion of trust or that I can’t trust or that I can’t trust the process. 

I can’t trust them. I might even lose trust in God. So, to recognize that time sometimes is going to be on its own with individual kids. The advantage that Houston had with their ships was that they had a pretty good idea of the time okay, 30 minutes, 35 minutes, maybe fewer for the Artemis, but the story of the prodigal son and the dad, he had no understanding of how long his son was going to be on the backside of the moon. Help me understand a little bit with that time element.  

We need to be pretty open-handed with time. How should we handle the time element? Because that is a big thing. Yeah. Would you say that parents too often have their own timetable and that is not helpful always? I think we have a very small button that says rest and trust, and a really big button that says panic and overwhelm, and that’s the easy button to hit. Yeah. And naturally, right? 

It’s our child. It’s a person that we’ve loved and poured into, and we’ve prayed and asked God for direction and help, and all of a sudden, those things aren’t so visible right now. And how to be able to trust that God is with me, that’s his greatest promise, isn’t it? That God says, “I will be with you,” and that if he’s with us, to also then be able to know he is with my child. 

And I will trust that. I may not see my kid on the backside of the moon, but I can smile to think and say, “But Jesus is with my child on the backside of the moon.” That’s his promise. Yeah. That is a beautiful thing when you sense the grace of God in places that you cannot go with your kids. 

Yeah. And you’re like, “Oh, this father, me, can’t get there.” “But that Father is there,” which is really beautiful. And over years, having different experiences with students of the past and then coming back and sometimes randomly running into an ex-student or old student. 

Yeah. I have very few students who come back to me and go, “Wow, you saw me at my best. That was the highlight of my life, seventh and eighth grade.” I’m glad that you saw that. Yeah. Most of them say, “Oh, those were years that were just really hard.” And they shake their heads, and they’re like, “I’m sorry,” or “I didn’t stay stuck like that.” 

And so, it’s neat to hear even in their perspectives when they look back on where they were at, to know that they felt lost, and it feels lost to them as they’re also in that sense of uncertainty where they’re at in their life too. I think there’s something really helpful there too, Craig, and that is seeing a more expansive view of my child, and that is seeing a mature adult that’s going to process this moment in a future place with the ability to reflect and the ability to see themselves. And sometimes life forces that exposure of ourselves. Yeah. And really, in God’s great design, most kids don’t like being on the backside of the moon. They don’t like being disconnected. There’s a piece of them that may want the independence rush, but most of them are really yearning to have a home base. 

They’re really yearning to have mission control where they can always go. Where they can always feel connected. Where they can always know that they’ll be loved and cared for in this place. And to be able to have that really speaks to them. Using that metaphor of Artemis, we would say gravity for sure is that connective thing. They were not going to go forever in a straight line because they were going to be pulled in by gravity. And so, I think you spoke again of a very hopeful reality that there can be a connective gravitational pull that very often we see win the day. Would you spell it out for us then, Craig? 

What is that connective attachment? What are those elements? How do I, as a parent, prepare for re-entry? Certainly, mission control did not shut down when the spaceship went out of sight. They didn’t say, “Okay, we’re all going home.” Shut off the lights. “We’re done.” They stayed very much engaged to what their purpose, what their mission was, what they had available to them at the time. They stayed home. They stayed faithful to that. And so, to be able to stay faithful in your love for your child you minimize some of those things that are out of your control, and say, “Okay, so what do I know? What am I able to do?”  

And so, we step into those things. “Okay, this is what I do remember.” “This is what I do know about my child. This is what I do love about who they are and who God has created them to be,” right? And then we get to be those that bear their lives in prayer. And I think that is a beautiful piece that we get to do, is hold onto those things in prayer. 

And we can do the Lord please help prayer, but also to do the reflective prayer of gratefulness for who they are and the hope that lies within each and every soul, and we pray into that hope. We pray a blessing into that hope. Not just always the negative and always how come they this and why can’t they that. 

But to be able to pray a blessing and that encouragement of the someday that they can be, and that we have that. We hold onto that. And we get to pray into that, and we get to encourage them and remind them of that. What are some of the things that we can do to remind our kids? What would be some of those elements that make for a healthy gravitational pull home? 

There’s a great anchor in Philippians 4 that talks about whatsoever things are lovely, good, true, good report, those beautiful things. We make that mental list of, “This is what I believe. This is what I know about who God has created our child to be. These are the strengths that I see in them,” and I get to be carriers of the blueprint of what God can do with them someday, and I hold onto that hope, and I encourage them that I see the blueprint of what God can do in their life someday. And to be willing to be an encourager to them. “Right now, we’re in a really lousy place.” “This is really hard. Oh, but I still believe in the blueprint.” 

“And I believe that God’s blueprint is still true for you.” I like that. Really grounding yourselves. We talk about consistency, constancy, and grounding ourselves in those truths. Craig, what advice would you have for parents who have a fair bit of regret? Apology might be appropriate. Yeah. And yet maybe not. 

Yeah. I don’t know. None of us do it perfectly. And how do you comb over everything that we should apologize for? So, I would love your thoughts about how we should think through that? I’ll share just a thought or two, Matt, on what I have heard from kids who have grown up and reflected on that question. 

They know that their mom and dad aren‘t perfect. They know that. But something that frustrates them is when Mom or Dad don’t acknowledge that they aren’t perfect. They appreciate that genuineness to know that “You know what? We weren’t perfect. Mom and Dad weren’t perfect. We know we made mistakes. We know there are things that we should have done differently. We did the best that we could with what we knew at the time, but certainly we could have done better.”  

And so, I think for them to be able to hear that is settling to them, and it’s also modeling to them that they don’t have to have it all figured out. I don’t always have to think I have to do everything perfectly because then we wouldn’t do much of anything. 

And maybe there were specific events or specific things that you step into, or you get intentional with. I think one of the best things we’re able to do, especially when there’s some maturity involved, is to ask our kid, “What could I have done differently? What place would that be?” They might remember some things. 

It’s interesting, some are very specific. “It was the eighth grade dance and you did not…,” and others are like, “Oh, I don’t know. It just always seemed like you were on my case about something,” right? Yeah. So, it can be a range in that, but to be willing to ask, be willing to seek that. 

Now, one thing you mentioned in that is when there’s some maturity there. So, even from that comment, I’m guessing that there’s perhaps a time and place for this, and that time and place may or may not be now. Yeah. Because it may or may not be heard. Is that right? I‘m curious about that maturity comment. 

Certainly, our kids will, as they grow, get to different seasons in their life that they’ll be able to understand what we’re talking about with a deeper degree of understanding, and that’s maybe next season or stage that you can step into that. Healing and health and growth happen over time. And on different timetables. Maturity happens differently with all of our kids, right? Yeah, but also, I think, it gives us a really healthy perspective to see that repair happens on a lifetime timeline. Is that fair to say? 

Fair to say. And even as we were reflecting on that word apology, how does that fit into this narrative? I think the analogy is that there are ditches on both sides, right? There’s that ditch of never acknowledging that I’ve done anything wrong and never acknowledging that you will need an apology. 

But there’s also a ditch on the other side, and that’s sometimes if we get stuck in the I was no good. I wasn’t a good mom. I didn’t do things right enough. And so, everything goes back to, “I’m so sorry for letting you down, and I’m such a disappointment to you.” I remember an experience that we had, and it was a tough season and one of our daughters had gone through a tough season, and our awareness of where we were at as parents was not where it should have been and could have been. 

And so, we acknowledged that in hindsight, and the awareness certainly hurt our hearts and we wanted to apologize, and we apologized for that. But whenever things would get rough again, it’s interesting, we went back to apologizing again. And one time my daughter just said, “You know that’s not helpful to me when you keep apologizing. That may help you, but it really doesn’t do anything for me. It doesn’t help me anymore.” And that was just an interesting insight. I was apologizing because it made me feel better, but I had to remember, too, that it had a moment of effectiveness for my child, but that she was asking us to move on. 

She understood it, she got it, but now she was ready to move on because that wasn’t helping her. That’s really interesting, Craig. We find a degree of comfort in knowing that God understands exactly what having children around the backside of the moon is like. I think he does, Matt, probably more than we realize. 

Yeah. We’re all on the backside at some point. Yeah. Craig, thanks, as always. I really appreciate your insights, your experience, and your insights into parenting kids in the backside of the moon. It’s fun to hit on this Artemis theme as we just saw this in real life and can connect it to our life. 

Bless you. Thank you each one for listening. We have profound respect for parents out there who are doing what they can, doing the best they can, making mistakes and knowing it, and then trying to recover from those. But we trust our kids into God’s hands. Thanks.