No Excuses

She was crying again. This time it was about spelling. Last time, it was about math. Before that, it was about writing. It’s always something with her. Her emotions are always at the surface, and she is easily overwhelmed by them. You never have to guess what this child is feeling because she will use many, many words to tell you.

It was only the third day of school, and she was already crying about literally every subject she had to work on. By hour three of this, I was just done. We had worked with siblings; we had worked alone. We had tried both music and silence. I had given her study skills, clues, subtle hints; I’d done everything but outright given her the answer. She had yelled and stomped and pounded and cried. If this was day three of school, how on earth were we going to get through the rest of the school year?

As I was making lunch, she sat at the island and moped….

“Mom, I don’t know how to do this.”

“Honey, I’ve been explaining how to do this in various ways for the last three hours.”

“I’ve never done this before.”

“Actually, not only did you do this every week last year, but you also started it again two days ago.”

“My sisters are distracting me.”

“They are finished with their schoolwork; they are allowed to play.”

“This is too hard.”

“You did the other four problems perfectly. This one is exactly the same kind.”

Then came the default excuse for this particular child: “I didn’t sleep well, and I’m hungry, and my leg hurts.”

That’s when I paused the chopping and asked what was really going on with her. The ensuing conversation uncovered that she was indeed exhausted- she hadn’t slept well; and after a long night of soccer practice, her legs did indeed hurt; and, given the time, it would be appropriate that she was hungry. She was claiming that these external circumstances were the determining factor for her behavior and subsequent performance. I then told her all of that was simply poor excuses to explain away her sin.

In Matthew 12:34, Jesus says that “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” He says that it’s not what is going on around a person that makes them do or say awful things, but the sin that is lurking in the person (Mark 7:14-23). Because of these verses, our family is developing a “no excuses” policy that applies from mom and dad, all the way down to the four-year-old. We have resolved that situational realities do not get to determine how we respond to them. We don’t have to have a bad day just because it is Monday. We don’t have to be snippy just because we are tired. We don’t have to be angry just because our schoolwork is taking longer than someone else’s. We don’t have to lash out just because someone was mean to us. We are asking that the fruit of God’s Spirit within us would be shown in how we respond to these external hardships.

See, my daughter’s “reasons” for not completing her work were not reasons at all. Her excuses were pointing to something much deeper at work in her heart. Buried deep in my daughter’s heart is the lie that hard things are bad. The lie that she is capable of perfection is well-watered in her personality; so, every challenge to her idol of comfort must be explained away with a “reason” that is external to her. If it is not her fault or the result of a deficiency in her, she can hold on to the idol of self a little longer. Her failure to complete her schoolwork is about something other than her. It’s the same result of sin that we see in the Garden of Eden: blame-shifting (Gen. 3:12-13). Like Adam and Eve pointing to something outside of them to deflect the reality of their sin, my daughter was making excuses so that her heart would not be exposed for the corruption that it held.

This time, it was my daughter.  But she’s not alone in this blame-shifting. I too am guilty of losing my temper and blaming it on a bad night’s sleep. I have yelled in anger at my children for not obeying my command perfectly. I have quietly believed lies of discontent and blamed my children for keeping me at home. Hear me well that I am not claiming to have arrived at making no excuses. Rather, like continually becoming a learning leader, I am striving to become a repenting leader. While I have hard conversations with my daughter about her heart, I am also deeply contemplating my own heart. I am learning to be more honest with myself about the sin that still lurks in my own heart, that seeks to steal worship from the true God and gain it for myself. I am learning to rightfully assess the lies I am prone to believe that would have MY kingdom come. I am learning to make no excuses for my sin and ask the Lord to be more gracious with me than I could ever deserve.