When parenting is overwhelming

Overwhelming Expectations

Good Morning!

My name is Zach Klundt, I am the associate pastor over at Freshwater Church.

I am married to my best friend Brittni, who is here today, hey baby!

We have 3 wonderful kids,

Evelynn who is 10, Rosalee who is 8 and our little man Theodor is who 2.

We also have a dog, Albus but he drives me a bit crazy, eat our socks and then throws them up, so I have very little patience with him.

We all moved here from Galesburg, IL in January of this year.

I was the youth director for 5 and a half years at my last church, Bethel Baptist Church.

I have dealt with the kids from 6th grade to senior years and then some for over 5 1/2 years

I have three kids, been a dad for 10 years.

Which means I know next to nothing about parenting, kinda.

But I do know that I love being a dad.

When I get home one of the greatest things is when my kids would run to me and give me a huge hug.

My first two did this for years and then it just stopped.

One day they were just done doing it.

I can’t tell you when it happened but it just did.

My little man runs up and hugs me but it is really quick because he is a busy playing and destroying our home.

He’s got plans, how dare I ruin them.

When I get home now it is a bit different, still great but different, now it is a play a game with me, can we workout, guess what happened at school.

And I love those conversations, I sometimes just miss the sweet snuggles that are thrown upon you when you get back home.

I think parenting is a lot like that.

We all have these moments that are super sweet and he love those moments, and then it shifts.

The kids move on to something else and that is great, but it can also mean that we are left playing catch up.

I think a lot of times we hear cherish these moments.

They will be gone before you know it, and those people are right.

Brittni and I tuck our kids in each night and we sing them a song but there is going to come a day when my kids aren’t going to want that anymore.

And that is okay, they grow up and they get older, and things aren’t as cool anymore but as a parent we are going, no please stay in it with me.

These are the cherished moment, the moments we want to relive over and over again.

These moments make parenting awesome.

And then there are the moments where you child won’t or can’t leave your side, which sounds great but it is the worst.

Where you are cooking dinner and doing dishes with a kid on your hip.

They are just screaming at you or for no reason as all.

Maybe you just told them not to lick the trash can or to stop eating the dog food- and now they are in meltdown city.

You had to tell them to lay down one more time, you can’t take the hitting, the biting, or the yelling between siblings.

The house hasn’t had a deep clean in 3 months, and the in-laws will be in at the end of the week.

You haven’t been on a date with your hubby in months, you haven’t had a quite moment in years, you don’t spend the perfect amount of time with one child, let alone 3, or 5 of them.

Your quite time is interrupted for the 5th time for some snacks and water refill.

Forget about family devo time, you just struggle to get yours in.

Dinner is left overs or pizza because by 5pm you are just tired.

You are emotionally, physically, spiritually drained.

You are overwhelmed.

Parenting can be this crazy overwhelmingly but joyful time in your life.

So the question is why?

Why does parenting and being overwhelmed seem to go hand and hand?

Maybe we need to back up further and ask the question how does one become overwhelmed?

Overwhelmed means a couple of things:

It mean overpowering, it could mean to bury under a huge mass, to defeat completely, to give to much of a thing to someone, and lastly the way we most commonly use the word overwhelmed it means to have a strong emotional effect.

You are overcome with intense emotions.

Stress and anxiousness are all signs that you are overwhelmed.

Those emotions could come out of you in negative ways such as stress or anger, this may lead us to lashing out at our kids and being overly harsh.

but also positive ways such as a joy or gratitude, like when you see the grand canyon, you could become overwhelmed with the beauty of the scene

Today we are going to be looking more at the negative side of being overwhelmed.

Now why does one become overwhelmed— in reality I believe that it comes down to this idea that we are not in control.

That eveything is just out of our control.

So this is what we are fighting against.

As parents, how can we combat this?

We all know this is something that hits us, so how do we respond?

I want us to look at what God says about being overwhelmed.

Let’s pray before we jump in here.

I want us to open up to 2 places Phil 4:6-7

Philippians 4:6–7 ESV

do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Here Paul is writing to the church of Philippi and church was having some issues and Paul finally drops this into his letter, and says looks, don’t be anxious about anything.

Don’t worry about anything.

Don’t worry about it sweetheart.

And what are we not to be anxious about?

anything.

Don’t be anxious about any of it.

Bills, being a good mom, your job, raising your kids, the house, laundry, being a good daughter, and we would be here all day talking about the things we are anxious about.

And Paul is saying don’t worry about it.

Easier said then done.

But okay Paul what do we do with this then?

“But in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your request be made known to God.”

So Paul says, give those things up.

I think we can all agree that the times we feel the most overwhelmed are the times when we feel in less control, or the times we feel like we have zero control.

And in those moments go to the Father.

Run to the Father.

Why?

In those moments when we feel overwhelmed, what are we seeking?

I think the thing that would make us all feel better would be peace.

The thing we want is peace.

And that is exactly what God gives you.

Philippians 4:7 ESV

And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

You will have God’s peace.

And God’s peace doesn’t make sense to us.

Because when we feel like the world is crashing around us we are good.

It doesn’t make sense.

But when you trust God to be in control you will notice a peace that doesn’t make sense to an outside world.

And God’s peace will guard your heart and your minds.

You may not like the situations that you find yourself in and God doesn’t promise us smooth sailing just because we give up all of our worries, but he does promise to guard our hearts and minds.

When our first born came into the world it was way before we expected.

When our first born Evey arrived in this world she was 1 lb 12 oz and 13 in long.

Brittni had gone into sever preeclampsia, She was only 29 weeks pregnant and Evey was measuring at 25 weeks.

Meaning she was not suppose to be out yet.

Yet the doctor came in and gave us some peaceful words, she said “We are going to take the baby.” —at 29 weeks.

Our first baby and even in that moment; call it the being naive or maybe just wishful, I knew Evey and Brittni were going to be okay.

I was at peace— and I am telling you it was not a peaceful situation— Brittni had 12 nurses taking care of her getting her ready for an emergency C-Section.

But as we looked back on it, we had peace about everything— In those few moments that were just a blur, I just remember saying, God I trust you.

Peace that defies the natural law of emotions is not something I just make magically happen.

I believe that it was the Holy Spirit granting me peace that surpasses all understanding.

Evey if you know her now is a beautiful 10 year old girl who spent 54 days in the NICU and never once did we worry about her not making it.

When we worry we become overwhelmed.

Many times we begin to worry about lots of things, and most of the time when we begin to worry it shows us maybe some areas of our lives that we have not given over to the Lord.

Maybe just maybe we are still holding on to something that we want to be in control of.

I want to tell you another story about how this played out in Jesus’s life.

On the last night Jesus spent on this earth he found himself in the garden of gathesmine.

Luke 22:39–44 ESV

And he came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives, and the disciples followed him. And when he came to the place, he said to them, “Pray that you may not enter into temptation.” And he withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and knelt down and prayed, saying, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him. And being in agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.

Talk about being overwhelmed.

Jesus is about ready to die.

He knows it’s coming and Jesus in this moment lets the human side of himself show.

He begins to feel overwhelmed.

So much so that great globs of blood begin to pouring off of his head.

And yes this can really happen.

It is called Hematohidrosis— and it occurs when someone is going through extreme stress.

So a couple of things here.

One we know that feeling stress can’t be sinful, because Jesus felt it.

We know being overwhelmed is not sinful because it is safe to assume that Jesus was feeling pretty overwhelmed.

But now what is the difference?

The difference is what we do when we feel overwhelmed or stressed.

Instead of us doom scrolling, or lashing out in anger, being rude in our tone, alcohol, porn, drugs, Jesus did the opposite.

He went to the Father.

The most stressful situation Jesus ever had to deal with on this planet, and where does he go?

He runs to the Father.

In the most stressful out of control times in the life of Jesus and he seeks time away with the Lord.

How many of us in here can say that when we be anxious, or overwhelmed, or stressed that our first thought is to get away with the father?

I won’t ask us to raise our hands, but I would guess that not very many of us do this.

Actually I think many of us find ourselves on social media scrolling, lashing out on the people we love, procrastinating and really just sitting in our pain.

Jesus gives us a model of what this looks like:

listen to his prayer:

As we walks away from the other disciples we falls down.

Luke 22:41–42 ESV

And he withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and knelt down and prayed, saying, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”

Death was on the horizon, I know that our situations that we are overwhelmed with does not mean life or death but it does mean something to us or else it would not overwhelm us.

But we have Jesus, who is pleading with the father, God if you are willing to remove this from me, please do so.

Or if there is another way please make it known.

He knows that he has to be the sacrifice for humanity.

And he want it to be a different way— the cross and the punishment that was waiting for him was going cruel, and painful.

And Jesus is coming to God and saying God I know that this is the plan, but if there is another way, let me take that one.

Jesus did not feel like he was in control, so he goes to the father.

Do we run the author of peace, or do we run to something that distracts us, that give us a temporary release, but the problem is still there once we come back?

I think God wants to allow Him to be in control.

And when we get overwhelmed it is because we are not in control.

Maybe you are thinking no that is not why I am overwhelmed, maybe you are here today and you feel overwhelmed because you are dealing with unmet expectations.

And I believe a big part of being overwhelmed is unmet expectations.

To be fair these two things could be separate but I tend to thing that one reasons why we get overwhelmed is because we have placed huge expectations ourselves.

The other day I was sitting in my office and I had just gotten a piping hot cup of coffee in my mug, I set it on my desk and then went and got a cup of water.

Now I don’t have the same mugs nor the same cups but they are both made of that metal material like yeti, or zac cup.

You all get it.

But as I was working, I went to grab my coffee and took a drink and it was the worst tasting coffee on the planet.

It was cold first off and it didn’t even taste like coffee, I almost spit it out because I was applaud at my coffee.

Until I realized that it was my water.

I like water, I would’t say love, because it is pretty blan but that is fine it’s water, I am trying to drink more of, even thought it is in all the soda, energy drinks, and body-armors I drink.

It is suppose to be pretty tasteless.

But my expectation was that it was going to be coffee.

And sometimes even a good thing can leave a bad taste in your month.

Because if you are expecting coffee and you get water it taste horrible.

“When we have expectations in life that are met with something other than what we wanted or expected from past experiences with it, it can seem horrible to us even though under any other circumstances we would love what we received.”

And it can lead us then to be overwhelmed by our circumstances.

Meaning that we like to control our fate, we want control of our destiny and ladies it doesn’t always work out for us and it is not in our control.

So this is what we are fighting against.

Control over our situations.

And there are many times that we are totally out of control.

As parents, how can we combat this?

May I challenge us today to change the narrative of where we run too when we are out of control?

Imagine that you are driving a car and Jesus is in the car with you.

Now where is Jesus sitting?

Is he driving the car, nah we want to be in control so maybe we allow him to be a back seat driver, he can speak to us and tell us when to slow down or stop but we are still widely in control.

Or maybe he is in the passenger seat, he can totally grab the wheel, as that great Carrie Underwood song tells us, but yet we still control the gas and the brakes.

You give him control of most things but yet there are still some areas that you want to own.

Maybe you have Jesus in the trunk because you don’t want to hear from anyone or anything!

May I challenge us today to get out of those cars, give the keys to Jesus, and climb into the trunk ourselves and tell Jesus to let us out when we get to the place He wants to take us.

May I challenge us to today to seek peace, to give our worries over to God.

Look I know giving up control is not easy and if you are here today and you are just a bit overwhelmed.

Mom’s I want you to know that you are doing a good job.

Maybe you don’t hear that enough which is causing you some feeling of being overwhelmed.

You should, and maybe you are here today and you are feeling this sense that you are not doing enough, let me remind you what you are called to:

Moses is talking to all of Isreal and he is giving them some instructions.

And here is what he says.

Deuteronomy 6:6–9 (ESV)

Deuteronomy 6:4–9 ESV

“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. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Love God— do this first above all else ladies.

Love God with all that you have.

And when you do this the peace of God will begin to flow out of you.

To where when you are at home you will begin to teach your children.

Moses tells the people to teach the kids diligently.

When you sit, walk, before bed, right when you wake up— be teaching and talking about God.

What you do and say matters.

Little side bar.

Can I ask a question?

Just a raise of hands:

How many of you would say that you came to know Christ by begin led by a pastor?

Sunday school teacher?

By your father?

By your mother?

I was in a room with about 800 people in New Orleans for the Southern Baptist Convention and they asked this same questions to a room full of ministry leaders and about 600/800 all stood up for their mom’s when ask who led you to the Lord.

Mom’s you play a vital role in your kids life, in their spiritual journey, don’t play the comparison game, that will lead you to feeling overwhelmed.

Love God with all you got, and then just talk about God in your house.

Oh I pray that we can be people that are so in love with Jesus that we talk about him all the time and our kids will catch that.

My kids tend to love whatever we are loving.

If we begin to starting working out, we tend to talk about working out a lot and our kids catch that and before you know it, they are asking to do workouts as well.

Kids catch what you are passionate about.

And for all of us in the his room our main passion has to be Jesus.

When you feel overwhelmed just stop, seek the Father, and give him control.

Full control.

I know it’s hard, why do you think Jesus was sweating blood.

It is so hard to do, but when we don’t deal with our stress in a proper God honoring way we fall into sin.

Mom’s you are crushing it!

Even when you don’t feel like.

Keep going keep loving your kids and your spouses well.

Look to Jesus above all!

I will leave you with this.

Instead of being overwhelmed by your current circumstances be daily overwhelmed by God’s infinite love and grace.

Be overwhelmed by God everyday.

Let’s pray

Questions:

What are the things that overwhelm you?

What are some negative ways to respond to being overwhelmed or stressed?

What are some positive ways to respond to being overwhelmed or stressed?

How do you handle being overwhelmed?

What was the last thing you were overwhelmed with?

How can we handle those feeling of being overwhelmed differently?

What does it mean to give our stress and worry over to God?

Think of a time when you had to give your anxiousness to God because it was out of your control?