About a boy's heart.

I paid Ethan a mid-day visit at school last week after he and a friend went from playful fighting to smacking each other a little too roughly on the playground.

I prayed as I worked through the morning and asked the Lord to make it clear what my son's heart needed in this instance.

Here's what I felt led to do: I took him outside and asked him to recount the morning's incident for me. He was clearly upset for the decisions he made. He explained that as he was about to hit her (yes, her) again, something inside of him told him to stop, that she didn't deserve to get hurt, and he started crying. He went to see the teacher and expressed his need for a severe punishment. He mentioned that he wanted to hurt himself and this gave his teacher a reason to call me.

It's hard to explain what repentance and contrition look like, but when he looked me in the eyes, I saw a truly sorry heart. That's all the evidence I needed to know that he had learned his lesson, and no amount of punishment would help him understand it any better. If the point of discipline is to teach a lesson, then I think God disciplined him without my assistance. That's a sweet place to be, I've discovered.

Because I saw this in him, I took a different route. He expected scolding, correction and consequences (my typical mode of operation). Instead, I told him I was proud of him for stopping and asking for forgiveness. I told him that his heart was soft and open to correction and that I was proud of him. *Proud of him.* Because our God is a God of forgiveness, a God who looks at the condition of the heart.

I reminded him of my many mistakes and that we serve a God of grace and mercy. I told him I loved him always, and we went our separate ways to finish our day.

I believe in God's grace, and that it's not just for an overextended mom. I believe that God is writing His story in each of us, and I want to be a part of that story in my son's heart. And so, we tried grace.

And it worked.