Table of Contents
Acknowledgments xiii
Parenting Doesn't Have to Be This Hard 1
Myth 1 Having Children Makes You Happy and Fulfilled: Discovering God's Real Purpose in Giving Us Children 13
Myth 2 Nurturing Your Children Is Natural and Instinctive: Why Biblical Love Is So Difficult to Live Out 37
Myth 3 Parenting Is Your Highest Calling: How Pursuing God First Frees Us to Love Our Children More 59
Myth 4 Good Parenting Leads to Happy Children: Exchanging Shallow Hopes for God's Deeper Purposes 77
Myth 5 If You Find Parenting Difficult, You Must Not Be Following the Right Plan: Learning to Rely on God Rather Than Formulas 99
Myth 6 You Represent Jesus to Your Children: How We Trap Ourselves in a Role We Weren't Meant to Play 127
Myth 7 You Will Always Feel Unconditional Love for Your Children: How Our False Ideas of Love Burden Us with Guilt 147
Myth 8 Successful Parents Produce Godly Children: The Danger of Making Too Much of Ourselves and Too Little of God 165
Myth 9 God Approves of Only One Family Design: Why God Is Not Limited by Imperfect Families 187
The Holy Enterprise of Parenting 209
Notes 215