To my surprise, tears would be collecting in her eyes as she listened. This may seem hard to grasp, but those tears were not hers. They were mine. At the time I didn’t understand. But that’s how therapy works. A patient delegates his unacceptable feelings to his therapist; and she holds everything he is afraid to feel, and she feels it for him. Then, ever so slowly, she feeds his feelings back to him.
– Alex Michaelides, The Silent Patient

I’ll be honest here: one of the hardest things for me to deal with as a mother are my children’s emotional outbursts. It is extraordinarily difficult to remain calm in the face of onslaughts of emotion the likes of which we rarely face anywhere else in our lives. In the adult world, people may be irritated at you, but they probably don’t yell in your face. They may be sad, but they probably don’t sob uncontrollably in your presence. They may be upset things aren’t going their way, but they probably aren’t kicking whatever they can reach. Our kids not only do all these things in a flagrantly unfiltered manner, they can do them multiple times a day or an hour. 

The natural tendency is to respond by either lashing back, especially if you know you’re right, or withdrawing, and never really addressing the issue at heart. To instead respond calmly, to receive the emotion without responding in kind, is in itself a significant act. It takes an extraordinary level of sustained intention. It takes significant emotional energy. I used to picture myself like a post in a stormy sea, withstanding the onslaught of waves, which after a long day would leave me feeling battered and depleted.

I fail often, which is why we have rules the kids can’t cross during tantrums, why I’m quite practiced at apologizing to them, and why I’ll leave the room if I know I cannot respond calmly in the moment. But I know it’s important, for the practical reason that it is otherwise impossible to discipline effectively or reach my child at all. 

But it’s more than that. It’s more than a parenting technique. What I’ve been slowly realizing is that this is one of the most difficult and effective ways that I live out the heart of Jesus to my children.

As Dane Ortlund notes in his book Gentle and Lowly, Charles Spurgeon once pointed out that in the four gospel accounts, in eighty-nine chapters of biblical text, there is only one place where Jesus tells us about his own heart, about the center of who he is. It’s in Matthew 11: “for I am gentle and lowly in heart.” The Greek word for “gentle” is only used three other times in the New Testament, where it is also translated humble or meek. The word “lowly” refers to being thrust downward by circumstance, being entirely approachable and accessible.

Meek and lowly. That is the heart of who Jesus is. Is that someone who would yell back when yelled at? Is that someone who would disregard someone’s tears, however repeated or illogical? Jesus’ heart is acted out through compassion. The word “compassion” means “to suffer with.” It is not sympathy, or even empathy, but an active entering into another’s state of suffering. Jesus was always being moved by compassion; not just filled with it, but moved by it. He is moved to heal. He is moved to feed, to teach, to offer his attention. Twice he is moved to tears, over sorrow not for himself but another (Luke 19, John 11).

When our children throw tantrums, when they have emotional outbursts, they are in a certain kind of emotional reality, that is a kind of suffering—however socially inappropriate, illogical, disproportionate, or misguided. When I see and receive those emotions with calmness and compassion, I am moving with the heart of Christ, whether I do it for three seconds or three hours. When I see their emotional reality and hold it next to the spiritual reality of God’s truth and holiness, I am beginning to see what God desires them to learn or how He desires them to be loved in that moment. High and holy, meek and lowly. Our children need both, holiness and humility, grace and truth. But it always begins with the heart of Christ, that meek and lowly heart that bears all things.