Make Up For Our Mistakes

My parents did not do everything right, and they both readily admitted this.  I forget what I thought when I was a kid, but now I know that I get a lot of things wrong as a parent.  I yell too much.  I scream too much.  I threaten too much.  I type on this blog instead of looking into my child's face.  I do not play with them enough.  So so many things and the list could go on and on just for one day.  Well, I want to share with you an idea that my parents passed down to me.  It is a prayer that they prayed for my brother and I.
"Lord, make up for our mistakes."

That is the prayer that my wife and I continue to pray for our kids.  We make so many mistakes that sometime its seems that that mistake will send our kids over the edge and totally screw them up.  So we pray "Lord, please unscrew them up."  In my 10 years of parenting, I think this is the best prayer I have ever heard a parent pray.  And I think the Lord loves to answer this prayer, to show us that no matter how screwed up we make our kids, he can straighten them out, that no matter how much our mistakes push our children away from God, he can draw them to himself, that no matter how ineffective we are as parents, he is the effective Parent.