By Dawn Carter

It was 11:30pm, well past the bedtime hour for my kids. The fierce Santa Ana winds had been howling all night, when I heard little Thomas, then four years old, wake up with a terrified cry. Bolting into his room, adrenaline pumping from my fresh Lego foot injury, I could hear the scraping sound of a tree branch on his window.

Ah, the old Scary Monster at the window routine is here. I have an opportunity to teach my child something about feelings, about comfort, presence and ultimately, about God. Here is my chance to model grace and truth… in that order.

Grace First

Now what kind of parent would I be if I ran into the room, heard his cries, and immediately launched into a lecture about how wind is created, how the tree is moved by innocuous airflow, and belittled him for being afraid? What if I confronted his feelings with a boatload of facts that are completely true, but not what he needs at that moment?

What a scared heart needs first is a hug. Not a lecture. Not a Bible verse (yet). A scared kid needs a big strong parent to contain that fear, to comfort and hold them and get those physiological reactions caused by the adrenaline to calm down.

This hug is what grace looks like.

The reason this is important is that for some of us, growing up, this step was skipped. The grace part was left out and for some reason, the grown ups in our lives felt compelled to clamp down on that messy side called emotion. So I have to constantly remind myself: Grace gives the hug first.

Truth Next

But what kind of parent would I be if I ran into the room, gave that big appropriate hug and contained all those scared feelings, but then never corrected the thinking of my four-year old with truth? What if I just got stuck agreeing with his assessment of reality and never moved into offering other ways to explain it?

After the grace comes, there has to be truth.

The crazy thing about emotions is that they are actually neutral. They just are what they are. The fear my son feels is real, but the fear is caused by believing something completely untrue (e.g. that there is a Scary Monster outside his window). This is why I renewing my mind with truth is so critical to my transformation.

Yes, I can pour out my heart to Him at all times, but God loves me enough to not leave me there. Grace and truth fills the One and Only (a.k.a. Jesus) who came from the Father (John 1:14). He had the perfect balance of compassion and reality check.

How beautiful that God gives me now, what I needed then, to pass on to my kids so they can face their Scary Monsters today.

DAWN is a wife, mother of three, and blogger from Riverside, California. Dawn shares her thoughts on parenting, technology, God, and life on her blog, Chronicles of Dawina. You can also see Dawn in her Deidox film, ‘Dawn: A mother of Three Discovers Her Unexpected Purpose’. Follow Dawn on her blog, Facebook, and Twitter.

You can read all of the posts in the Grace Week Series here.