17 Oct Being a Confessing Parent

I am a member of a church that practices sacramental Confession.

I wasn’t always. My family were Southern Baptists, and I was baptized, as a teenager, into the Reformed tradition, so I know all the theological objections to the idea of confessing one’s sins in the company of clergy:

There’s the big one, that only God, and no human being, can forgive sins. Then there’s the other, that I can tell my sins directly to God. As my Mississippi mother might put it, “I don’t need no priest telling me my sins are forgiven.”

The funny thing is, I still believe both of those deeply Biblical precepts. And yet, there has been almost no spiritual discipline that has formed and shaped me in my Christian life over the last twenty years that the practice of Confession.

About a month ago, just like I have two or three times a year throughout my adult life, I did it again. I slipped into the silent church, sat down in a pew, and waited for the person ahead of me to finish her Confession. In my Eastern Orthodox tradition, Confession takes place right out in the open in the church; there are no “phone-booth” confessionals like you see in old movies. The person confessing stands alongside, not in front of, the priest, and after an initial penitential prayer, speaks his or her sins quietly.  Then, after a few minutes of counsel, the priest reminds the penitent that they may go in peace, for God forgives sins.

So why do this? Especially if I believe that God can forgive my sins at the very moment my heart asks.

Here’s why: I had been consumed with resentment against someone, for reasons that were not entirely sane. I had prayed about it, and talked with friends about it, and been to my therapist about it. It clung around my mind like a cloud of gnats.

But I had not owned up to it as a sin. I had not spoken the words admitting my fault. To speak words is to take thoughts and, through the body, bring them out real into the world. I stood with Father Isaac at the front of the church and confessed it, these petty emotions, and then I kneeled on the burgundy carpet to receive his blessing. I walked out of the church with the burden lifted.

My goal here, though, is not to convince anybody about the sacrament of Confession, but simply that the process allows us, in real time, to experience grace again and to recommit ourselves to the process of sanctification.

This is therefore a longish preamble to saying, Confessing your sins to your children. Not past sins or adult matters, but the sins you regularly commit against your children: Not putting the phone down quickly enough when they have something important to tell you. Not really listening when something is troubling them, and just saying “Oh, come on, it will be OK.”

We could call those the sins of “omission.” Maybe you don’t commit the sins of co-mission, but I certainly do: “What is wrong with you? It’s past time to go. Get a move on!” And every time I am reminded of the Orthodox rebbe who said that words are like a feather pillow dumped outside, whose feathers you will never be able to pick back up again.

And maybe you haven’t, but I have certainly sworn, and slammed doors, too. One time, when my son was much younger and much more rambunctious, I deliberately stepped onto a balsa wood airplane and broke it when I was irritated at his behavior—and felt that immediate sear of pain when I heard his sobs that his own mother had done something like this, deliberately.

I had to kneel down that day on the floor of the upstairs hall and apologize. I had done this. Nobody else had made me. Would he forgive me?

I had to do the same thing a few days ago with my daughter: She’d been bugging me about buying her something, and I found myself carping back at her—as though it were her fault, and not that I had not been consistent in gently correcting her behavior about asking me to buy her things unnecessarily.

I had done this.  I took a deep breath and asked for forgiveness from her. I said the words. I did not, as I and so many parents I know, just allow busyness and shame to let me just use my parental authority to skate over the moment and not apologize myself.

A little while later, my daughter piped up, unprompted, “Mama, I am sorry I got mad at you.” Only in owning what we have done can we begin to release it.

For Further Reflection: What are ways you can demonstrate repentance—not just apology–to your children? Pay attention to your actions this coming week, and look for opportunities. Also look for opportunities to succeed in behaving in new and God-honoring ways.