When People Don’t Understand Your Child (Rooted ‘26)

Question - How do I respond with grace when people do not understand my child?

By Taylor Jones

This is a really hard one.

I have found it way easier to extend grace to those that I know have good intentions. We know how sometimes someone saying ‘You are doing such a great job’ or ‘I could never do what you do’ just doesn’t land right. And that’s because we’d rather have the offer of help instead of a compliment that seems to alleviate any obligation of help.

BUT it’s easier to extend grace knowing that the intention is meant to be good.

Now, the real challenge comes with those we have felt true malice intent. Those are so so hard. We had that experience with someone as a previous church of ours and it was really really hard to forgive. But God calls us to forgive.

The big thing to remember though is that forgiving does not mean you have to give access. You can truly forgive someone and move on but have clear boundaries in place.

All of this done through prayer is so important, but this fact isn’t stated often enough and it should be.

This is how we are able to extend grace even in the hardest of situations.