This year our youngest daughter launched into her university years, leaving Angela and me with somewhat of an empty nest. I say, “somewhat” because our daughter lives at home but works and commutes to school. Still, we have moved beyond the childhood parenting years into loving and parenting three adult daughters. In hindsight, I have some thoughts that might help you as you continue parenting children at home. In no particular order, here are those thoughts:

1. You will never regret heart connection. As I look back, some of the most important “work” we did as parents of children and teenagers was heart connection. The time spent at the family table through the years is golden. The bedtime talks, blessings, and prayers were important. All the time walking the beach, paddling the kayak, and hiking the trails mattered. Listening even when we didn’t have the energy really made a difference. It is relentless work, but the heart connection that began forming in infancy matters greatly today with our adult children.

2. Prayer is more important than you imagine. It is good to be aware of your limitations as a parent. We can do our best. We can disciple at home. We can demonstrate life in Christ. We need our children to discover an abiding relationship with Christ for themselves. This happens in partnership with the Holy Spirit. Prayer matters in this regard. Even with the best strategies, resources, and efforts, we can’t manufacture a genuine love for Jesus in the lives of our children. They need to experience Jesus themselves. We must pray for this. This is a work of God. There are some things only Christ can do: heal, ignite, and give purpose in the lives of our children. As I look back on the years gone by, I would pray even more as a parent.

2. It’s hard to let our children fail. Resist the urge to always save the day. Our children need to become resilient and flexible adults, dependent on Christ. As our children grew, and even now to some degree, I have this “protective father” desire to always save the day for them. There are times this is not helpful. Let your children experience the hard things and even fail. Go through it with them. Don’t abandon them in it, but don’t just fix it for them. Teach them to push against the proverbial rock. They will be stronger for it both in life and faith.

2. Intentional discipleship at home will bear fruit. We really did disciple our children. Not perfectly, but consistently. We demonstrated the faith. We made mistakes too, but as far as I can see, our efforts to make disciples at home really bore fruit. All three of our daughters have abiding relationships with Jesus as adults. We didn’t have to ask them to find a church when they left home. They chose to serve Christ in a local church by their own desire. They read the Bible and pray, and they seek to hear and obey Jesus. They aren’t perfect, just like their parents, but they are faithful. We will never regret the time we spent making disciples at home.

5. You will probably regret some things. When I hear people say they have no regrets, I assume they are lying or just in denial. I have some real regrets. I regret the angry parenting moments. I wish I could go back and spend more time with them in their childhood. I wish I could take back things I said or did that stuck with my girls in ways I don’t love. Yes, there are regrets, and I assume you will have them too because there is no such thing as perfect parenting.

Here is the hope. These passages guided our steps all along the way. As we have moved into a new phase of life and parenting, I testify that every word of these Scriptures is reliable and true.

Deuteronomy 6:4–7 “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.

Proverbs 22:6 Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.

John 15:5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

Ephesians 6:4 Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Colossians 1:9–14 And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy; giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.