While there are lots of hard parts of the extended “stuck at home” period many of us have found ourselves in, several friends and colleagues with younger kids have taken advantage of this period to take on a momentous parenting task: potty training. When Mom and Dad are both at home, it’s a little easier to take a team approach to introducing this important skill. But as every parent who has been through it knows, potty training is not for the faint of heart.

This week’s featured article from our CT archives is a brief reflection on how one mother’s experience of potty training served as a meaningful avenue of spiritual formation in her life. I’ve also included an article I wrote years back that explores similar ideas—how God meets us as parents, right where we are, and reveals more of himself to us through our parenting tasks. Even when we do a poor job as parents—or perhaps especially when we do a poor job—we can encounter and experience the depths of God’s parental love for us and for our children. Whatever stage you’re in as a parent, be it potty training, teaching your teenager to drive, or entering into grandparenthood, may you receive God’s love and give it generously to the children in your life.