I pace along the sidelines of the turf field and past my abandoned chair. This warm and sunny day feels ironic given the emotional storm crashing inside of me. The first game of my son’s recreational flag football team isn’t going as expected.

My eleven-year-old sits on the sidelines across the field, shoulders hunched. He gazes toward the track and plucks at the fake grass. His friend comes off the field and plops down beside him. My son is momentarily pulled back to the present. He smiles, offers a high-five, and utters what looks like “Good job.” He talks with his friend for a couple of minutes before the coach puts his friend back in the game.

Disappointment flashes across my son’s face, and I watch as energy drains from his body. He shifts his eyes away from the field to anywhere but the painful moment he finds himself. When the game finally ends, my son has played thirty seconds of a forty-minute game. And he’s not the only kid with this low playing time. Three others were in the same boat.

My anger surges. How could a program advertised as recreational, intended to teach youth who’ve never played flag football before, treat kids like this?

My son meets me on the track beside the turf field, eyes cast downward. His arms sag at his sides.

“I’m so sorry for the way the coach treated you,” I said. “It wasn’t right.”

My son snaps his head my way and stands a bit taller. The acknowledgment of the unfair situation he faced makes him feel seen for the first time in an hour. No one likes to be treated unfairly. And when we or someone we care about experiences unfair treatment, it can be unsettling.

Waiting On The Lord

The prophet Habakkuk understood this unease. Habakkuk lived during a time when God’s people were more interested in pursuing evil than righteousness. The prophet was heartbroken by the injustice unfolding before his eyes and questioned why God wasn’t addressing it (Hab. 1:1–4). So, he brought his concern before the Lord.

God’s response to Habakkuk wasn’t what he’d anticipated. The Lord would bring punishment upon the Israelites using an even more evil nation (2:5–6). This confused the prophet even more.

From a human perspective, this can feel out of line with who God is, but when we look closer, we see that God’s character and ways are perfectly aligned. That evil nation would receive judgment in God’s timing, but we can trace the Lord’s redemptive purposes at work. God’s plan never shifts; he still desires to redeem his people. This instance points us to when God would send Jesus to suffer the greatest injustice at the hands of evil men so that mankind could be restored to our Creator. God’s people aren’t made right with God through good works, but only through the work of Jesus on our behalf (2 Cor. 5:21; Heb. 7:25; 1 John 2:2). Our faith is only made possible through Jesus.

The ways of the Lord don’t always make sense to us (Isa. 55:9), but we’re still called to trust in his unchanging character and wait on him (Hab. 2:3, 20). If we place our trust in the Lord, we won’t be disappointed. One day, God’s justice will come.

We aren’t guaranteed that God will reverse all the unfair and broken things this side of heaven, but we’re promised one day he will (Rev. 11:18). The prophet Habakkuk walked away with the same truth. No matter how confusing or difficult things may appear, we can “take joy in the God of [our] salvation” (Hab. 3:18) and “quietly wait” (3:16) for the Lord to bring about justice.

Sidestep Venting

The conversation that unfolded between my son and me on the walk back to the car caught me by surprise. Words spewed like lava from my mouth. Words that didn’t need to be said. I was frustrated with the coach and the entire situation. My oldest son has played lots of recreational sports over the years and even plays on a travel sports team. This was the tiniest amount of playing time he’d ever experienced. The situation wasn’t right, and my son sensed my anger at what had transpired.

“Mom,” he said, breaking into my thoughts. “I need to be the one to talk to my coach about this.”

I stopped mid-stride and looked into his determined blue eyes. He was right. God was teaching us something, and my son needed to take the lead. I could support and assist him, but he needed to address the unfairness himself. My response wasn’t helping. Later, when I shared the situation with a friend who is ten years ahead of me in this parenting gig, she admonished me.

“Jenny,” she said firmly, “Your son can’t hear you vent your frustrations about the situation like that.”

And she was right. “A fool gives full vent to his spirit, but a wise [woman] quietly holds it back” (Prov. 29:11). No matter how frustrated I felt, I needed to select the words I spoke regarding a situation with my children more carefully.

But I also felt convicted about something else. I had been sharing my grievances with friends who came up later to ask if my son and I were okay. And while it’s not always wrong to share frustrations, it was fueling self-reliance and bitterness.

I needed to follow the example of Habakkuk. When the prophet experienced injustice and confusion about life, he voiced his complaint to the Lord—not his friends! And while our experience pales in comparison to what Habakkuk walked through, I could still emulate his response. I needed to talk to Jesus about my frustrations and ask for help to trust God through it. I couldn’t change this situation, but I could model what trusting in and waiting on the Lord looked like to my son.

Advocating Is A Skill

My son and I prayed together, vocalizing our confusion about the situation since he had regularly attended practices and maintained a positive, respectful attitude. We asked God to guide my son in how to handle the conversation and to trust God no matter the outcome. Together we proclaimed that only faith in Jesus could lift us above the situation (Ps. 61:2–3), not venting or clever plans.

Later that week, my son spoke to his coach about what needed to change on his end to get more playing time. Over the coming weeks, my son not only got more playing time, but he also advocated for a specific defensive position. My son was more confident asking the coach to play a specific position because he’d already approached him before. And the coach seemed open to my son’s idea because he’d addressed him in a respectful manner about team-related things. By the end of the flag football season, I could see how the Lord used a seemingly unfair situation to grow my son—and myself. We could trust the Lord’s steadfast character and purposes in placing my son on this flag football team, even when things didn’t feel equitable.

Coaching kids how to navigate unfair situations before involving an adult is a good life skill for them to learn. But it can also increase our dependence on the Lord as parents. We learn to release our sense of control over to the Sovereign Lord and model how faith turns to Jesus first when faced with something that feels wrong. Some circumstances may warrant a parent’s involvement immediately or require intervention if circumstances continue to escalate after the child has tried to resolve the issue themselves. But this instance was an ideal opportunity for my son to navigate more independently. While I wish our children didn’t have to deal with unfair circumstances, I’d rather walk alongside my son now in finding a path forward rather than forcing him to figure it out on his own further down the road.

Growing Our Faith Together

I’m still learning how to trust the Lord with my kids rather than assuming it’s all on me. Just like Habakkuk learned to trust Jesus despite painful and confusing circumstances, we can trust Jesus to work through the challenging situations that arise in the lives of our kids.

We aren’t promised that every unfair situation will result in the outcome we hope for. But we can trust that God can grow both our faith and our kids’ faith through whatever comes our way. And we can rejoice that, one day, every unjust action will be resolved.

The heartache of seeing our kids experience unfair treatment is tough, but we serve a God who can turn pain into courage and hope. Our God can take what seems like a dead end and transform it into a new path forward.

No matter what worst-case scenario we find ourselves walking through, we can emulate Habakkuk. We can bring our complaints directly to the Lord and trust that even when a path leads us through uncertainty and hardship, God always has a plan for his glory and our good.