In warm months, after we’ve eaten supper and my husband is doing the dishes, I like to take my younger two kids on a walk. Our neighborhood has a playground nearby, so occasionally we’ll stop in to play.

Recently, road construction blocked our usual sidewalk path. I set out on a regular evening walk with my youngest kids, who desperately wanted to go to the park. Because of the construction, I started going a different direction—to the utter chagrin of my children.

“No! No! I want to go to park!” my two-year-old bellowed.

“Mom … this is not the way to the park. Go the right way!” my five-year-old scowled.

I patiently told both of them that I was taking them to the park. I just wasn’t going in the predictable way they wanted me to go. I tried to explain about the construction blocking our path, but they were in no mood to listen to me. They wanted to go to the park, and why wouldn’t I just go the right way already?!

After a few more (increasingly snappy) attempts to make them understand, I gave up, gritted my teeth against their complaints, and upped my pace to our destination. After several whiny blocks, my five-year old said, “Oh … hey! There’s the park! I guess you did know the way, Mom!” (Insert facepalm here.)

While being a parent can be both an absolute joy and an absolute struggle, one of the things I value the most about parenting is how it gives me the tiniest fraction of a glimpse into what it must be like for God, our heavenly Father. He has to put up with so much from you and me!

This walk reminded me that we truly are all children of God—we must seem so childish to him sometimes. How often don’t we rail against God, the Creator of the universe and of our own brains, when things don’t go our way? How often do we look at the events of our lives slotting into an order we wouldn’t have chosen and question his plan? We are no better than my kids when we balk at the validity of God’s knowledge.

Thankfully, in our childishness—in our shortsightedness and whininess—God remains the best parent ever. When we were dead in our sin, God didn’t snap at us or give up on us. He didn’t wash his hands and wipe us all out. Instead, God dealt compassionately with us, as dearly beloved children. He knew the way to salvation, and he had a plan.

When Adam and Eve fell into sin, they likely wanted a simple, predictable solution to get them out of the mess and back into a restored relationship with God. Waiting thousands of years for Jesus to arrive in history as the promised Messiah and Savior of the world would never have been a human idea—it’s too bizarre! Yet God knew just the right time to send Jesus to live a perfect life, die a perfect death, and rise in victory to restore harmony forever between God and man. As the apostle Paul says in Ephesians: “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved” (2:1,4,5).

God is wise enough to see the roadblocks of our own sin and shame and gracious enough to remove them through the redemptive work of Christ. Sometimes, like my stubborn children, we aren’t ready to hear the grace of God’s Word because of the sinfulness of our hard hearts. May God forgive us for this day in and day out! The good news? No matter how juvenile our actions may be, God never gives up on us.

Though we will whine and complain and kick our way through this life as children in his eyes, what a blessing it is to be a part of God’s family and to have a perfect Father! He is protecting us, guiding us, and knows the way to eternal life even when we are discouraged or can’t see what he is doing. We are loved as God’s kids forever, and because of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, he will keep walking with us until we reach the prize of heaven—a free gift from the best Dad imaginable.

I can’t wait to see the parks there!