The longer I am in ministry, the more I come across parents of adult children who live with self-condemnation because they feel like they weren’t the parents they longed to be. Some of them really did mess up (and I address that here). Others are definitely being too hard on themselves. My job as a pastor is to help them apply God’s word to allow conviction while also offering His forgiveness and grace. This is my first attempt to do that. Can you help me finish it? There are no doubt other mitigating factors that make parenting so difficult I might not have run across. If you’d like to offer a suggestion or two for something I should add, please do so in the comments. And perhaps those of us who have adult children could encourage each other there in the comments as well.

Amy’s husband Stuart played professional minor league baseball. Maybe that’s why she likes to use baseball analogies so often when she tells me she wishes she could have another “at bat” with her oldest son Nathan.

“I know we struck out with him when he was young. Stuart was gone half of the year, money was tight, and I wasn’t born with the ‘mom gene.’ Half the time, I honestly didn’t know what to do. We had to move so much that it was hard to build friendships and find a supportive church. The life of a professional athlete has so many mountains and valleys, which puts a lot of pressure on the marriage and the whole family. We’d drag Nathan along. I wish we could get another shot with the resources we have now and what we know now.”

There’s a place for conviction when we know we’ve failed. It is healthy to take stock of where we have fallen short as parents and to make amends with our children. In this instance, I told Amy it could be very healing for her and Stuart to apologize to Nathan and say they wish they would have done some things differently. In fact, that’s exactly what they did.  The reality they pointed out to me, however (and it was a good reminder), is that it’s not like they are now all-star parents who hit home runs every day with the way they treat Nathan now that he’s older. They still fail. They still wish they could do better. “I totally blew a phone call with him last week!” Amy lamented.

Here’s my follow-up spiritual counsel:

Be kind.

To yourself.

“Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32). Should we not treat ourselves as we are to treat others? It was Jesus who said to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, so if His servant tells us to have this attitude toward our neighbors, we’re to adopt the same attitude toward ourselves.

2 Timothy 2:24 says “the Lord’s servant must … be kind to everyone.”

Are you someone? Of course you are. This means, as God’s servant, you must be kind to yourself.

What I’m about to say is not to excuse you for past performance, but to help you understand the difficult challenge of parenting and why you may not have performed your best. Show yourself the same compassion you are called to offer others, and then show yourself the same forgiveness you are urged to offer others.

Here are some common struggles people have typically face that make focusing on or excelling in their roles as parents so very difficult. These aren’t excuses, but they are real challenges and it’s only fair to consider them.

Financial Challenges

So many young families live paycheck to paycheck. I know a wonderful man in ministry, just getting into his forties, who leads worship at his church. He works hard at another job on the side, creating goods that restaurants and businesses buy. His wife has some serious health issues—she lives in constant pain—so he has to provide for his family on his own. They live in an expensive area, and their oldest child will be attending college in a year.

“Both of our cars are old and broken down but we can’t even imagine buying a good used one to replace them. The two we have run on prayer more than anything else!  We’re able to pay our bills but if our daughter doesn’t get a great scholarship, I’m not sure how we’ll pay for her college. And sadly, we live with the constant tension of knowing we are one unexpected major bill away from not being able to pay our mortgage.”

My heart goes out to such couples. When Lisa and I were a young couple with one child, we often drove down to visit my parents for an entire weekend. They loved it because our daughter was their first grandchild. What they didn’t know is that sometimes we drove down because we had no more money until the end of the month and not much food. If we could afford the gas to drive from Bellingham to Puyallup, Washington, at least we’d have a few days of no additional expenses.

That kind of living creates a pressure that threatens to devour your mental and even physical energy. When you’re focused so much on paying your bills, there’s less mental energy left over to devote to your relationships. There’s only so much of us to go around. Plus, I was working two jobs at the time as well—devoting hours to a writing career that cost us money rather than earning any money. Even worse, I’m the worst handyman in the history of human men. We couldn’t save money by having me fix something because I’d invariably make things worse.

It’s important to feed, clothe, and house your children. And many of you weren’t trying to feed them expensive organic food from Whole Foods or clothe them with Burberry, Bloomingdale’s or La Coqueta Kids. You shopped at yard sales. And your mortgage wasn’t really a mortgage—it was rent that kept going up and there was nothing you could do about it except move…which would cost you more money in the short run.

If you were a single parent, trying to provide all the financial and emotional resources… Understand, that’s asking a lot! You faced a heavy burden, and the guilt you feel at not being able to provide all that your children needed—physically, spiritually, and emotionally—while facing that kind of pressure often neglects the pressure keg you lived under.

Have some compassion. Be kind to yourself. Life was hard.