Love That Meets Us Here and Calls Us Forward

One of the mistakes parents make is thinking we must choose between acceptance and guidance. We think it’s a choice between simply accepting our children, which can sound like letting everything go, and only guiding them, which can easily become correction, control, or pressure. But loving parents don’t have to choose between the two. They receive their children deeply enough to guide wisely, and they guide them lovingly enough that acceptance is never lost.

Sarah had been relieved when her sixteen-year-old daughter, Ella, started spending time with her new friend, Ava.

Ella had seemed lonely for months. She came home quiet, answered questions with shrugs, and spent most evenings in her room. Then Ava appeared. Suddenly, Ella was laughing again. She had someone to sit with at lunch, someone to text after school, someone who seemed to make her feel less alone.

At first, Sarah was grateful. Then she began to worry.

Ella became more secretive with her phone. She was vague about where they had been. She came home from Ava’s house energized, but also sharper and more defensive. A few stories did not quite add up.

So when Ella said, “Ava wants me to come over Saturday,” Sarah felt the speech rise in her chest.

I don’t trust her.

I don’t like this friendship.

You’re not going.

But she paused before she spoke.

If she began there, Ella would only hear control. She would not hear the love underneath it.

So instead, Sarah said, “Tell me what you like about being with Ava.”

Ella looked guarded. “I don’t know. She gets me. I don’t feel weird around her.”

Sarah nodded. That was it. This was not rebellion first. It was Ella reaching for belonging.

“That makes sense,” she said. “You’ve been wanting someone who really sees you. I can understand why this friendship matters.”

That was not approval. It was alignment.

Then she continued, “Because I love you, I want to help you pay attention to something. When you’re with Ava, do you feel more like yourself or less like yourself?”

Ella looked down.

“A good friendship does not have to be perfect,” Sarah said. “But it should make it easier to be honest, not harder. It should help you become freer, not more hidden.”

Sarah still set limits: No riding with Ava’s older sister. No being somewhere without an adult knowing. Call if things get uncomfortable.

But the limits came after Ella knew she was understood.

Her mom was saying, “I see why this matters to you. I get what you are looking for. And I love you too much to ignore what it may be costing you.”

That is responsive love.

It meets the child where they are. And it calls them toward what they may yet become.

Process theology has deeply shaped the way I think about parenting. Although I most often use the language of “open and relational” theology, process theology is constantly in the background.

I’ve been thinking about responsive love lately, and I’ve realized it has two distinct components. First, responsive love meets us where we are. It celebrates victories, walks with us when life is mundane, and sits with us when we suffer. And after receiving what we’ve gone through, responsive love draws us toward the future and what we may yet become.

Alfred North Whitehead, a central figure in process thought, uses the term “nature” to describe aspects of God’s relationship to creation. I do not think God has three competing natures. God’s essential nature is love. Once we set aside possible confusion over the word “nature,” Whitehead’s threefold description helps us see how divine love relates to creation: God holds possibility, receives the world, and offers guidance toward what may yet become.

Whitehead calls one aspect of God’s relation to the world God’s “primordial nature.” This phrase sounds technical, but the idea is beautiful. It is the side of God that always knows there is a faithful next step, a next movement toward healing, a better possibility still available. God eternally holds and values all possibilities for beauty, healing, wisdom, courage, tenderness, honesty, and flourishing. This is not yet God’s specific guidance for a specific moment. It is the deeper source from which such guidance can come.1

God also relates to the world through the divine “consequent nature.” This is the side of God that is affected by the world. God is not only the source of possibility. God feels what actually happens. The joys, griefs, failures, sufferings, beauties, losses, and achievements of the world become part of God’s own life. Here God becomes the “feeler of feelings”2 and the “fellow sufferer who understands.”3 Because of the divine consequent nature, God truly sits with us in our situations and suffering.4

Finally, God relates to the world through what Whitehead calls God’s “superjective nature.” This is an even more awkward term, but here, divine love comes full circle. This is the side of God that moves from divine reception toward divine guidance. God does not merely receive the world into the divine life. God receives the world, integrates it with the fullness of divine possibility, and then offers back a fresh possibility shaped for the concrete situation. God doesn’t simply feel with the world. God also calls the world toward healing, beauty, wisdom, and flourishing. Divine love suffers with, but it also leads forward.5

As God relates to us in these ways, God effectively says:

I understand what has happened and can sit with you here.
I know what is still possible and can guide you forward.
I won’t coerce or force you, but I will offer you the best possibility love can offer.

This way of thinking about God’s love does not give parents a formula. It gives us a pattern.

This pattern begins with possibility. Parents do not know all that their children can become, and should let their children script their own future. Yet loving parents hold a vision of what makes for life. We keep before our children possibilities for honesty, courage, kindness, wisdom, responsibility, repair, freedom, and flourishing. In that sense, parents help shape a child’s world of possibilities. We do not choose a child’s future, but we help make the most life-giving possibilities visible.

But loving parents do more than hold possibilities open before their children. They also receive and guide. If God’s love receives and guides, then nurturant parenting should do the same.

Nurturant parenting is sometimes misunderstood as soft parenting, permissive parenting, or parenting that lets children’s feelings run the house. But that is not what nurturance means. Nurturant parenting combines warmth and guidance. It is deeply responsive and lovingly directive. It takes the child seriously without making the child the center of all authority. That is why the two aspects of responsive love matter so much.

The first aspect teaches us to receive the child before we react to the behavior.

Before we correct, we try to understand. Before we set a limit, we try to see what is really happening. Is the child angry, ashamed, afraid, lonely, overwhelmed, embarrassed, tired, or longing to belong? What are they reaching for, even if they are stepping out unwisely?

This does not mean every behavior is acceptable. It means every child remains receivable.

A parent can say, “I understand why you were angry,” and still say, “I will not let you hit.” A parent can say, “I see why this friendship matters,” and “I am not comfortable with that situation.” A parent can say, “You were scared to tell the truth,” and “Now we need to fix the lie.”

That is loving acceptance. It is not approval. Not passivity. Not surrender. It is the parents’ willingness to meet the child where they are.

The second aspect teaches us to guide the child toward what they may yet become.

Children need not only to be understood. They need to be formed. They need help learning to tell the truth, repair harm, regulate their emotions, respect boundaries, make wise choices, and move toward their flourishing. A love that only receives but never guides may leave children alone with feelings, desires, and fears they don’t yet have the skills to manage.

But guidance is most loving when it grows out of reception.

When a parent has first listened, understood, and aligned with the good desire behind the difficult behavior, guidance becomes less like control and more like an invitation. It becomes less about forcing compliance and more about helping the child recognize the next faithful step.

This is what Sarah was doing with Ella. She did not begin by attacking the friendship. She began by receiving Ella’s longing for belonging. Then, from that place of understanding, she guided Ella toward discernment.

“Does this friendship help you become more yourself or less yourself?”

That is nurturant parenting. It is not controlling. It is not permissiveness. It is love that receives deeply enough to guide wisely.

This is where theology can reshape the instincts we bring into parenting.

If we imagine God primarily as controlling, we may assume love means getting the outcome we want. We may parent with more pressure than presence.

If we imagine God as distant or uninvolved, we may think that love means stepping back and letting children figure things out on their own.

But if we imagine God as responsively loving, we begin to see God differently. God becomes neither controlling nor detached. God receives the world in love and offers each moment the possibility of what may yet become.

That image of God can form us as parents.

It invites us to ask, in the difficult moments:

What is my child experiencing and feeling right now?

What longing, fear, hurt, or need is behind this behavior?

How can I receive my child without approving what is harmful?

What life-giving possibility might still be available here?

What is the next wise, loving, and possible step from here?

Those questions slow us down. They help us parent with less panic and more presence. They remind us that the goal is not merely to stop a behavior, win a power struggle, or force a child to comply. Instead, the goal is to help our child grow in wisdom, love, freedom, responsibility, and flourishing.

Nurturant parenting lives in that space.

It says, “I am with you here.”

And it says, “Let’s move toward what is better.”

Like God’s own love, nurturant parenting says:

I am with you here.
And I will help you move toward what is better.

It receives.
And it guides.

Special thanks to Chad Bahl and Tim Miller for their help with this post, and my references to Whitehead.

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