Santa, Mercy, and my Daughter's Big Mouth.
Learning to love repentance... one kid at a time.
[Spoiler Alert: This article contains a discussion about certain festive fictional characters and their imaginary status. If you have young believing ears in the room, you might consider reading this another time.]
My daughter Savannah, seven years old and wielding words like a seasoned prosecutor, recently figured out on her own the truth about Santa. I’m not totally sure how she put all the pieces together, but she can be a little like Sherlock Holmes when it comes to this stuff. She asked enough good questions to know the jig was up.
This discovery came on the back of a week of particularly challenging behavior. Anyone who’s raised teenagers knows this phenomenon (though my daughter is only seven)— the constant desire to have the last word, to say one more thing, to never just turn around and let it go. This probably happened ten or twelve times in just a few days.
I’m normally a calm, measured person, but I found myself raising my voice to tell her to stop talking. Imposing groundings. Fining her $1, $2, $5 at a time from her birthday money. Sending her to her room all day. This girl had nothing left to lose. She was now broke from all her birthday money and was still willing to push the envelope with more comments and questions—all sarcastic, aimed at riling us up, letting us know she was still alive and kicking.
Then came the visit to my brother’s house for a pre-Thanksgiving meal. We made it abundantly clear that she was NOT to share her newfound knowledge with her similarly-aged, Santa-believing cousins. My naivety told me this was too sacred for her to screw up. Surely she wouldn’t continue her hot-streak and disobey.
Welllll… I was wrong.
Days later, we got a text from my brother and sister-in-law. Savannah had told one of her cousins that the tooth fairy (all fairies in fact) and Santa weren’t real.
To say we were frustrated with Savannah is putting it lightly. My wife tends to take these things personally, getting sad and frustrated. I just get mad. And here’s another thing about me that’s not great for parenting: once I feel someone has done something wrong, it’s hard for me to just let it go. Even after reconciliation, I carry a conflict hangover (sometimes for days) where things don’t feel normal.
After several rounds of denials, Savannah finally apologized—it was my wife, Corinne who broke her. Seeing that the fire and brimstone approach wasn’t working, my wife explained, in a heartfelt way, how Savannah’s disobedience had likely taken something from her little cousins—something that brought them joy each Christmas. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t kind.
As often happens with kids, breakthroughs can happen all at once. Suddenly, she felt badly. She got emotional. She asked for forgiveness and seemed by all accounts to have repented, understanding the gravity of what she had done.
But the real point of this story comes next.
Later that evening, I was sitting on the couch reading when Savannah walked over and asked if she could sit beside me while she read, something she normally likes to do. But I, instinctively and without really considering what I was saying, looked at her and said, “No. I would really like some space. I’m frustrated with how unkind you’ve been to me the last several days.”
Savannah walked away, dejected. Hurt. Sad.
It was only after sitting with that decision for a few hours that I realized how unlike Christ I had been. My daughter had made a mistake—something kids do. She’d realized she hurt people. She’d apologized, which is no small feat. By all accounts, she was wanting to reconcile with me on the couch.
My rejection of her stings on multiple levels. Repenting is hard enough when you know you’ll be embraced afterward. What good is apologizing if you still pay the relational penalty from your father afterward?
The Great Requirement
Recently, I’ve been studying one of my favorite verses in the Bible: Micah 6:8. A friend calls it “the Great Requirement”—like the Great Commission or Great Commandment, something to walk out every single day. It reads: “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
That middle phrase, “love mercy”, I’d never really applied to forgiveness, much less parenting. To be honest, I didn’t really know what it meant. Maybe be nice? Be kind? Show compassion?
But mercy (hesed in Hebrew) is so much more. It’s covenantal faithfulness. It’s God’s loyal love that rejoices in repentance, prioritizes restoration, and forgives freely. It’s not just showing mercy—it’s loving it. Celebrating it. It’s the posture of the father waiting for his prodigal son, scanning the horizon not to recount failures but to catch the first glimpse of a child turning home.
Mercy is about priorities. You cannot love punishment more than you love restoration. It’s personal—you have to have been forgiven to forgive. And mercy is best at its worst—when the offense is greatest, when the hurt is deepest, that’s when mercy shines brightest.
Most importantly, mercy is not tolerance of failure—it’s the joyful expectation of turnaround. The prodigal’s father doesn’t tolerate his son’s return; he welcomes it, waits for it, runs toward it while the son is “still a long way off.”
Making Mercy Worth Having
In that moment on the couch, I was teaching my daughter how mean mercy can be. Every time we ask our children to repent and then continue to make them pay an emotional penalty, we’re putting conditions on mercy that Christ never did.
These aren’t massive betrayals we’re dealing with. They’re fifty-times-a-week small decisions to annoy, frustrate, and test us. But when our children choose to turn back, to repent, to recognize their wrong and try to do better—even if it’s fifty times that week for the same thing—I cannot allow mercy to look petty. I cannot allow my acceptance of their apology to come laden with the baggage that there’s more they need to do for me to treat them like my child again.
If I am their father here on earth, trying to mirror their Father in heaven, then my mercy needs to look like His mercy. Complete. Immediate. Joyful.
Think about it: What are we teaching our children about God’s mercy when ours comes with a probation period? When “I forgive you” is followed by coldness? When reconciliation requires them to earn their way back into relationship?
We’re essentially operating like Santa with his lists—sure, you said sorry, but you’re still on the naughty side. More bad actions than good actions. The slate isn’t ever actually clean, its just maybe conditionally outweighed with more good things one day. But that’s not the gospel. Christ doesn’t say, “I forgive you, but I need some space.” The Father doesn’t tell the prodigal, “Welcome home, but sleep in the servants’ quarters while I process my feelings.”
The Child-Like Grace We Need
For those wondering—yes, I found Savannah and apologized. Not proud to say it was days later, after I’d really thought it through and felt convicted about my behavior.
You know what the really funny thing is? Kids can be remarkably good where we are not. She immediately let it go. She carried absolutely no grudge, no hangover, and immediately wanted to know if we could now read books together on the couch again.
It’s a good reminder that if we want to enter the kingdom, we too have to become like children. There are so many ways they can frustrate us, but there are also wonderful ways they can teach us.
So my challenge to you, especially parents:
How are you training your children to think about mercy?
Are we practicing unconditional mercy as we parent them?
Every time we accept an apology but withhold relationship, we’re teaching them that some mercy is partial, that forgiveness can be cold, and that sorry isn’t always enough.
May we instead love mercy the way God loves it—completely, expectantly, joyfully.