Have you ever really thought about the first family? Not the sweet Bible story version with flannelgraph figures—but the raw, real, complicated, messy one? Because when you look at Adam and Eve not just as the first humans, but as the first parents, it hits different.
They didn’t have childhood trauma to work through, or a toxic upbringing. They had God Himself. And they still got it wrong. Which means maybe, just maybe, there’s room for some grace in our parenting mess too.

I’ve made a lot of parenting decisions out of pain. I’ve tried to be the opposite of what I experienced, only to end up hurting in a whole new way. Delivery—not just childbirth, but how I deliver correction, truth, love—that’s been a shortfall for me. And yeah, fear drove a lot of it. But fear and faith can’t sit in the same room. One’s gonna have to go.
I know how drained I’ve felt as a mom, even when I’m doing the best I can. Writing this… I find myself having empathy for Eve.

She didn’t just bring sin into the world—she brought children into a world of sin. And that’s a heavy thing to carry. She labored in pain—not just in birth, but in motherhood. I gave birth without pain meds, and I can tell you: it’s no joke. But I had monitors, nurses, a countdown, a finish line. She had nothing but pain and uncertainty. And hormones. And a broken world she helped break. And no one to call for help.

Imagine the emotional weight of knowing that your child even has the capacity for sin because of your actions. That the first time your son has a dark thought… it’s rooted in something you started. That’s mom guilt at its rawest.

Cain was the firstborn. The first child ever born. Potentially her first love. And he turned out angry, jealous, hard-hearted. And eventually… a murderer. But that didn’t happen overnight. The Bible tells us sin starts in our thoughts. It crouches, it waits. Cain let it grow. God Himself warned him—sin is crouching at your door—and he still opened it. That’s not on Eve. That’s a choice Cain made.

But I still wonder—what did Cain think about his parents? Did he resent them? Did he blame them for the brokenness around him? For the pain inside him? When God confronted him, Cain didn’t sound remorseful—he sounded pitiful. "My punishment is too much to bear." Not, "I'm so sorry." Just... "I can't take this." That's not repentance. That's self-pity.
And yet, even Cain was marked by God—not to punish, but to protect. God didn’t abandon him. Just like He didn’t abandon Adam and Eve. Just like He doesn’t abandon me.

See, when I mess up as a parent, I want to fix it. But sometimes the fix isn’t mine to make. Sometimes it’s between them and God. And that’s the hardest part—watching your child walk away from what you taught, knowing you planted seeds of both faith and flaws. You hope they’ll come back. You pray they’ll turn around. And you have to let go enough for God to work.

Eve never got to read the parable of the prodigal son. She never got to see Jesus tell that story of return and redemption. She just got a promise—one day, a Savior would come to make things right. She didn’t live to see it. But she still hoped.
And I’m not trying to make excuses for myself here. I’m not saying, "Well, Eve blew it too, so I guess we’re all just doing our best." I’m saying… I’m no better. I’ve had more tools. More access. More help. And I still mess up. And my kids might look back and see places I failed. Even if I don’t agree with every piece of it, their feelings are valid. Their stories matter. And so does mine.

Back in October I was struggling with a hard parenting lesson and will never forget a conversation I had with a friend. It was a game changer for me. She asked, "Who loves your child more?" I knew what she was getting at and although I wanted to fight the truth—I admitted it was God. The reminder that more than my children are my children—they are God’s children. So I laughed and said, "Alright God—handle Your kid." And He has. In ways where the door was opened for Him to do so. And I have faith that He will continue to.

Sometimes, as a parent, you’re just praying they hold onto the good stuff. That something sticks. That the things you poured into them don’t get lost in all the noise of life. And sometimes it takes letting them go be grown—like in the prodigal son story. The father didn’t chase him. He waited. And when his son came back—he ran to him.

Hindsight and the Double-Edged Sword of Precedence

Eve had nothing to model—but that also meant she had no expectations to measure herself against. She wasn’t scrolling through curated perfection or drowning in parenting advice. She wasn’t comparing her toddler’s behavior to the “Jones’s kid” and wondering if she was failing.

But precedent is complicated. We have history, knowledge, and faith to lean on, yet somehow, we still fail. We still don’t grant ourselves grace—even though grace is now available. Eve lived in a time where grace hadn’t yet been revealed—it wasn’t a “thing” she could cling to. We live in a world where grace is freely given, and yet we still struggle to accept it. We still measure ourselves against impossible standards. More knowledge hasn’t meant fewer mistakes, just deeper self-judgment.

Maybe that’s one of the hardest lessons in parenting—understanding that precedent doesn’t always equal prevention. Knowing what’s right doesn’t mean always doing it. Eve had none of the resources we do, but we still repeat her mistakes.

Cain’s Sin—Not Instant, But Growing

Sin doesn’t come out of nowhere. It crouches. It waits. It feeds on thoughts long before it ever touches actions.

Cain had no culture influencing him, no peer pressure or toxic voices encouraging violence. He didn’t see a world full of hate and rebellion like we do. And yet, sin still grew. It didn’t need an external push—it festered in his own mind. The firstborn of the world, harboring jealousy, resentment, bitterness. We don’t know how early it started. But it didn’t need anyone else's opinions to speed up the process. Cain fed it himself.

And God warned him. He gave him the chance to master it. To stop it before it overtook him. But Cain let it grow. He listened to his own darkness and silenced the voice of God.

That’s the danger today too—not just the external influences pulling at us, but the internal struggles we feed in secret. We might have more distractions now, more comparisons, more noise. But at its core, the battle is the same—it starts in the heart, long before it reaches the hands.