The Perfect Parent | Travis Waltner

Now, I've been a parent for 16 years now, and one of the big temptations that I had being a parent, and I know this is true of so many of you, is I had the temptation and the pressure to be perfect. You know, you have this wonderful child, you love them so much, you want to do everything for them. And so you're like, I want to do everything perfectly. I never want to screw up. I want to make sure I give them everything that we need. And we put all this pressure on us to be a perfect parent. Well, if you don't know me very well, or don't know much about me, I've been married to my wife, Jessica, for 19 years. Dang, I look young. The years haven't been kind to me. But so I've been married to her 19 years. This year, it'll be 20 years, and we have five kids together. When we were dating, we talked about how many kids we wanted. I wanted two. She wanted four. We ended up with five. The math on that doesn't make sense. I thought we'd get an average. We got, like, the maximum plus one. But here's our family, all five of them. They're in the top right. That's my oldest son, Ian. He's 16. Jet is in the middle. He's 14. And then Wren, she's 12.

She just had her birthday last week. Paxton is nine. And that little crazy guy in the front, that's our youngest, Cruz. I was going to say devil, but that wouldn't have been appropriate to say in church. He keeps us on our toes, for sure. Now, parenting is one of the hardest things I've ever done. And it actually reminds me a bit of water torture. You know what water torture is? So they, like, clamp your feet and your hands, and they just drip a drop of water on your head over and over and over again for hours and days and weeks until you go completely insane. That's parenting, isn't it? It's like one unflushed toilet, drip. The toys are left out, drip. Another temper tantrum, drip, drip, drip, drip for hours and days and months and years until you go absolutely insane, right? Last week, I was having a conversation with one of my kids, and they're involved in this activity at school, and they wanted to stop. They wanted to quit the activity. And I was trying to encourage them, like, no, I don't want you to quit. I want you to keep going. There's a lot to be learned from this activity. Well, what started with it as a simple conversation, and maybe this has happened to you before, became a little more intense. The temperature started to rise. We were getting louder and louder. And then my son, he said to me, look me straight in the eyes. He said, Dad, don't you want me to be happy? I looked at him, and I thought for a second about how to respond, and I looked

back at him, and I said, that's the stupidest thing you've ever said in your entire life. Now, it would have been good if I stopped there, but I followed up with this. No, I don't want you to be happy. And in fact, if I would have pursued happiness in my life, I would have never had kids. Not my finest moment as a parent. That brings us to our new series called Raise Them Up, where we're going to be talking about parenting and how to pour into the future generation. Adam's going to be sharing next week, and then Bob Merritt's going to be following up the week after that. But you get me today. And after that story, you're probably like, I can probably leave because this guy doesn't have a lot of wisdom that I want to listen to when it comes to parenting. But I share that story just as a way to share, hey, I'm in this with you. I don't have everything figured out. I'm trying to figure out this parenting thing as I go as well. One important thing before we begin, we have always been a little hesitant to do a parenting series at Embrace. For one, we're not experts. But two, there's a lot of you here today that don't have kids. But here's the heart of this series. Whether you have kids or not, I really believe this. We are all called in some way to pour into the next generation. We all have been given some sort of wisdom, some sort of experience, some sort of talent that we are supposed to pour into those that are younger than us. And so in that respect, this series will be helpful to all of us. An example of this, there's a gal at our church and her name is Missy. Missy has been a part of Embrace for a very, very long time. She doesn't have kids of her own, but she felt this call to pour into the next

generation. And so she volunteered at Youth Group and they put her with a bunch of sixth grade girls. Sounds awful, doesn't it? That's what they did. They put her with a bunch of sixth grade girls. She's been with those sixth graders now for six. years, and they're now juniors in high school. Kind of cool. A few weeks ago, it was Missy's birthday, and it was on a Saturday. Get this, on a Saturday, and these junior girls went to her house and surprised her with cake, flowers, presents, and pizza. I think that is incredible. Missy may not have kids, but she is pouring into the next generation, and she needs a message like this just as much as I do as a parent. So wherever you're at, raising kids or maybe grandkids, mentoring students, influencing younger people, I believe this series is going to be helpful to all of us. Now, I've been a parent for 16 years now, and one of the big temptations that I had being a parent, and I know this is true of so many of you, is I had the temptation and the pressure to be perfect. You know, you have this wonderful child. You love them so much. You want to do everything for them. And so you're like, I want to do everything perfectly. I never want to screw up. I want to make sure I give them everything that we need. And we put all this pressure on us to be a perfect parent.

I remember when I first born, and was born, when my wife was pregnant, we read every book. We went to every class after he was born. My wife is a dietician. We gave him only the best food. I used to I'm not joking. I used to play music for him and tap the beat on the top of his head because I thought it would make it more musical. That's stupid. Yeah. I also I heard somewhere I would do these bicycle leg stretches because I heard that if you stretch out the muscles, they'll be more athletic. I was a psycho. I don't know what I was doing, but here's the deal. At 10 months old, Ian started walking. I mean, that is ahead of the game. He was advanced, my friends. And then we homeschooled him for a year and a half, and he was reading before any other kids. And I'm like, genius, baby genius. We are killing it as parents. Perfect, perfect, perfect. Now fast forward to the fifth kid. Forget the stretches and the organic snacks. We're just hoping he doesn't go to jail. I mean, quite literally, that would be a win. Here's the deal. I want to release you from something today, and I really believe this is important.

I want to release you from this. You will never, ever, ever be a perfect parent. Never. It is impossible for you to be a perfect parent. And here's the deal. And this is going to be hard for some of us to hear. Your desire to be a perfect parent will keep you from being a good one. Let me say it one more time. Your desire to be a perfect parent will keep you from being a good one. If you try to be a perfect parent, here's what you'll do. You'll put unrealistic expectations on your children. You will have no joy in your parenting. And every time you mess up, you're going to feel shame. Your desire to be a perfect parent will keep you from being a good one. Here's the truth. You will never parent perfect, perfectly. You will screw your kids up. You will never be enough for your kids. Only Jesus can be enough for your kids. So instead of trying to be perfect, I want to suggest that there's a better way. There's a better goal to aim at. Stop trying to be perfect and instead pursue being present. Let me say it one more time. Stop trying to be perfect and instead pursue being present. Perfection isn't possible, but being present is. Doing everything correct is not possible, but showing up is.

Here's the deal. If you want to change your kid's life, if you want to mold the future generation, you can do that by just showing up, just being present in their lives. Now, it'd be easy to think like this being present thing, this is just some parenting technique, some parenting hack. But really, being present, it flows from the character and the heart of God. Listen to this. This is from Psalms. It says, where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there. If I make my bed in the depths, you are there. Even there, your hand will guide me and your right hand will hold me fast. We cannot get away from God's presence, the height nor the depth, nowhere that we can go can we get away from the presence of God. And it says when we are in his presence, he holds us up and he guides us. How about this? Another verse in the Psalms. God is our refuge and strength and very present help in trouble, very present. When he is present with us, he helps us, he guides us, he strengthens us. And lastly, from Zephaniah, the Lord your God is with you, is present with you. He is mighty to save, he will take great delight in you. He will quiet you with his love, and he will rejoice over you. I think that's amazing. When you're in God's presence, he delights over

you, he loves you, he rejoices over you. So when we talk about being present with our kids, this is not just some parenting strategy, this flows from our God. When we do this, we reflect the nature of who God is to our kids. Those verses in God's presence, we receive guidance, strength, comfort, peace, joy, and love. The same is true when you're present with your kids. When you're present, they receive guidance, guidance, they receive joy, they receive love. So today I want to talk to you about three ways, three ways that you and I can be more present with our kids, or if we're pouring into the next generation in any way. The first is this, be present with our words, be present with our words. I love this verse from Proverbs, it says this, a word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver. Our words can transform the life of a child. Our words are like gold shining in a setting of silver. I don't think this is exaggeration, the right word at the right time can change the course of a child's life. Last week, I had a mentor reach out to me, he was just driving to work, he just reached out to me and he called me to tell me he was proud of me, and I was becoming a great leader. Five minute conversation, hung up the phone, those words stuck with me the rest of the week. It's powerful. Food is like, sorry, words are like food to our soul. It's nutrition for our mind and body. Our kids need words as much as they need vegetables and air and sleep. Years ago, I watched a documentary about a guy named Todd Marinovich. Todd Marinovich, he was kind of bred to be an NFL quarterback. His dad Marv did everything he could to make Todd into a quarterback from nutrition, to the drills he ran, to exercises, everything they did in Todd's life was to make him an NFL quarterback and it worked. Todd was amazing. He

was a great high school quarterback. He went to USC and then he got drafted by the Raiders. It was kind of crazy. Throughout this documentary, something struck me. The whole time that Todd talked about his dad, he never called him dad. He only ever called him Marv. And there was one scene and it was powerful. Todd was talking about he had a good game with the Raiders and he met his dad on the middle of the field and for the first time ever, his dad Marv said to him, I'm proud of you. And these are the words Todd said. I finally did what I wanted to do, please the old man. At that moment, I knew I accomplished everything I ever set out in playing football. Those are the words that Todd Marinovich waited his whole life to hear. I'm proud of you. And in that moment, way too late, he finally pleased the old man. So let me ask you, what words are your kids waiting to hear from you? What words are your kids waiting to hear from you? Maybe it's I love you. Maybe it's I'm proud of you. Maybe it's I'll be there with you. Maybe it's something a lot harder. Maybe it is, I'm sorry, I really screwed up with that thing I did five years ago. Or maybe it's harder for your kid to hear like, hey, I love you. But what you're doing is going to wreck your life. These words are going to look different for each kid. But here's my challenge to you. You have to be specific. You have to mean them. Kids can smell, they can sniff out fake from a mile away. We have to be students of our children. We need to know what makes them tick. We need to know what their hopes are, their dreams are, their fears, their insecurities, that we need to think about it. We need to pray about it. We need to figure out what is the word that our Kid needs to hear, and then we need to say it, need to say it. I'll be honest with you.

I am not naturally good at this. I'm not a great encourager. I like to stay a long way away from feelings. I'm not a fan of feelings, and I'm actually not very good with words one-on-one with people. Maybe you're similar to me. I wish I could just tell us, hey, you can take a pass on this one. It isn't that big of a deal. It is a massive deal. Our kids need to hear these words from us, words that would give them life. Now, ideally, you should say those words face-to-face. That's what you should do, say them face-to-face. But if that is too much of a jump for you, text them, write them down, send them a note. Once again, ideally say them face-to-face, but any words are better than no words at all. So what are the words your kids are waiting to hear from you? I challenge you, don't wait to say them. Say them this week. Better yet, say them today. Okay, second way that we can be present with our kids is to be present with our presence. To be present with our presence. What do I mean by this? Well, some of us, we're not present with our kids because we're not around very much, right? We work maybe all the time or we travel a lot or maybe we just like hanging out with our friends more than our family.

Here's the deal. We have to be present with our kids. We have to be around. If we are not around our kids, we will not be able to shape them into the people that they need to be. They need to know that we are physically around them. So some of us were not present because we're not around, but then there's a whole nother category. This is the one that I fall into. We're present, but we're not present. We're in the room, but our mind is somewhere else. It's on work. It's on our phone. It's on what happened the past week. We all know what this feels like, right? To be present and not present. So what does it look like to be truly present with our kids? Truly present with the next generation? Well, I think it's really three things. We have to see them. We have to connect with them. We have to delight in them. See, connect, delight. See, simple. We need to actually look at them. I don't know. This happens to me. I'm in a room with my kids and I don't look them in the eyes. Anyone else do this? So I have to look at them.

They need to know that I notice them. I look them right in the eyes. I need to see them. I need to connect with them. Can't just be in the room with them. I need to say, how'd your day go? Asking them questions, interacting with them, trying to get to know them better. And then I need to delight in them. They need to know that I like them. They need to know that when I spend time with them, I would rather be with them than almost anywhere in the world. If you do those three things, you see your kids, you connect with them, you delight in them. You will be present with them. I coach my son, Pax, and I coach his basketball team. And just a side note, if any of you guys have ever refereed a game I've coached, I want to repent of my bad behavior in front of all of you right now, especially that one time I threw the chair on the court. That was uncalled for. I never did that, but I probably thought it in my head. But I coach his team and when the season starts, I am often spending a lot of time with Pax. We're at practices together. We do workouts together. We practice in the driveway together and I'll be honest, I can be hard on him sometime. He's my kid and I have high expectations of him, but I realize something and I only realized this very recently.

When I am coaching my son, I am not present with him. Even though I am coaching him and I am physically with him, I am functioning as a coach, not a father. Nothing wrong at functioning as a coach, but we have to know which one's primary. I'm functioning as a coach, not as a father. So what do I do? After we have a practice and I maybe yelled at him a little bit, I go downstairs in his room at night, put my hand on his head. I give him a big hug and I say, hey, I'm proud of you. I love watching you play basketball. It's one of my favorite things in the world to be your dad. What am I doing in that moment? I'm trying to separate. Say, I know I coach you, but I am a father first. I know I'm with you physically when we're playing basketball, but I want to be present with you as a dad right now. Here's my challenge for all of us, and I'm wording this very, very intentionally, do something this week where you can delight in your kid, that you can delight in them, not something for your child, not something to correct them, not something to teach them, something to delight in them, something that when you're doing with them, they'll notice that dad, mom, mentor, they just like to be with me. This could be a million different things. You know, it could be sitting down on the floor and playing a game with them. It could be taking them out for ice cream, going to a park. If you have a 30-year-old kid, take them out to lunch. Which 30-year-old kid doesn't want mom and dad to buy lunch for

them? It's like, yes, we feel seen. I'm not 30. I'm 40. Still like it, you know. Something that communicates I like being with you. Now, quick side note on this, being present. There is something that keeps us from being present more than anything else in the world. What is it? It's our phones, right? I mean, how many of you have experienced this? You've been sitting with your family. You've been having a great time, and all of a sudden, you get one notification, one text, one email on your phone, and you were present in the place, and you left the building. You're still physically there, but your mind is somewhere else. Now, I wish I had this figured out. My kids will be the first to tell you dad is on their phone way, way, way, way too much. But here's the truth. Mom and dad, mentors, whatever we are, we need to figure this out. We need to put the thing away. We need to turn it on silent. We need to stomp it under our foot. I don't know what we need to do, but we need to figure this out because we cannot truly be present when that phone is buzzing in our pants. Last way to be present with our kids is this. Be present with your prayers. We need to be present with our prayers. James, the brother of Jesus, says this. He says, pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. Did you catch that? Prayer. It is powerful, it is effective, and it is healing. There is no greater thing that you can do for your family, for your kids, for the future generation than to pray for them. A couple of years ago, I was really struggling with this. I just was not being consistent in my prayers for my family. And so what I did is I set an alarm on my phone. An alarm that didn't take me away from being with my family, but actually brought me

back to thinking about them. And so that alarm goes off every day. And some days I snooze it. Some days, you know, I don't follow up. But most days, most days, I pray for my family. And I have seen, I'm not joking, I've seen tangible things that God has done because of the prayers I have been giving up to him. Now, the reason why I'm passionate about this isn't just because I like the Bible and all sort of things. I'm passionate because I saw it modeled in my life. I got amazing, amazing parents. My mom, I like to always joke with her. I'm like, Mom, you're an amazing parent. You weren't perfect, but you're amazing. Drives her insane. I'm trying to be kind. I should be like, I know I wasn't perfect, blah, blah, blah, which means I should probably stop doing it. But I don't. I keep saying it and driving her a bit nuts. But here's the deal. My mom was not perfect. No parent is perfect. But my mom did something so much better. She prayed. I know every night before she goes to bed, she says prayers for me, my brother, and now all my kids. Every single night, she prays. And she will until she leaves this earth. I try to think about like someday I'm going to go to heaven. I'm gonna think about all these times. Oh, Travis, you did this amazing thing. You did this. You did this. And God's gonna say, no, you were upheld by the prayers from your mother. Your mom held you up in those times. So, Mom, thank you for not being perfect. Who cares about being perfect? Thank you for praying. Because your prayers, the person that I am, parents, hear me. If you do anything from this message, pray for your children. You can lead your kids to Christ by praying for them. You can keep them from temptation for praying for them. I know some of you, you maybe don't have contact with your kids or your kids don't want to

talk with you. Guess what? You can... still be present by praying for them. There's no greater work than you and I can do for our kids and for the future generations than praying for them. So back to my alarm, what do I do? I set this alarm, it goes off at noon every single day and I stop and I pray. I pray one thing for my wife and my five kids, just whatever comes to my mind. I don't have this all planned out. So sometimes it's a test I know that they're having that day. Sometimes it's maybe an issue with a friend. For my youngest, it's like, can you help him control his emotions? Cause he's crazy. You know, that's a selfish prayer a little bit. I pray one thing for each one of my kids and then I pray for protection. I literally imagine a bubble going over top of my kids and I pray God that you would protect them. And then I pray against temptation because there's nothing that'll derail the life of a child more than making bad decisions. It's very simple, just three things I do. One prayer for each family member. I pray for protection and I pray against temptation. There's nothing special or formulaic about this. This is just what I do. If it helps for you, use it. But here's my challenge.

Church, if you're not regularly praying for your family, if you're not regularly praying for the next generation, let's start today. Even right now, take out your phone, put an alarm in, pray for so-and-so, pray for my basketball team, pray for my kids, whatever it is. And then every day, just do it. I just can't imagine what would happen if each one of us started daily praying for our families, for our kids, and for the next generation. What would God do if we did that? So where have we been today? What have we covered? Whether you're a parent, you're an uncle, you're a grandparent, whatever you're doing, pouring into the next generation, encouragement is stop pursuing perfection and instead pursue being present. Be present with your words. What is the word that your kid needs to hear? Say it to them today. Be present with your presence. See them, connect with them, delight in them, and then be present with your prayers. Put an alarm in your phone and pray for them every single day. You know, sometimes I like to think about what it'll be like at the end of my life. I imagine sitting in a hospital room, just old and still bald, I'm guessing,

unless something amazing happens. But I like to think about who will be around my bed when I die. You know, my parents will be gone, so they won't be there. Probably won't have a lot of friends around because they'll either pass away or they'll be in nursing home. Somewhere. Oh, my wife is there, but you just never know. I don't know who will be with me at the end, but I know who I want to be there. Five people. Ian, Jet, Ryn, Paxton, Cruz. I'll be honest, if at the end of my life, those are the only five people around me, it will all have been worth it. You know, I joked at the beginning with my son that being a parent didn't make me happy. Being a parent has made me so happy. And if I would have the opportunity at the end of my life to have those five people around me while I'm passing from this world to the next, that would be the happiest moment of all. That would make it all worth it. Who do you want around your bed when you die? Say it again. Who do you want around your bed when you die? Let me leave you with this. Those whom you want present with you at the end, make sure you're present with those same people today.

Let's pray. Father, thank you so much that you are present with us and you call us to reflect your goodness and your glory to our kids and to the future generations. It's so difficult. When I leave this place and I go home to my kids, I will be tempted by my phone. I'll be tempted by the football games. All the things will tempt me from being present and seeing my kids, connecting with them. and delighting in them. Lord, help us, whether it's our children, kids in the youth group, kids in the e-kids, whatever it is, help us to pour into the next generation. Love you, we praise in Jesus' name, amen. Hey, everyone, it's Adam from Embrace. If you enjoyed today's message, make sure to subscribe to Embrace's YouTube channel to stay updated. You can also click here to check out other videos. Thanks for watching. We'll see you in the next one. Bye.