This parenting thing is crazy hard!
Before I had children, I was the perfect parent. I had it all figured out. I mean, I was a kid once. I saw all the mistakes my parents made with me and all the obvious ones that parents around me growing up were making, so as long as stayed away from that, I should be fine, right? Plus, I had the added bonus of being well versed in childcare since I was a pre-teen, so I was pretty sure that I knew what I was talking about. I had a perfectly prepared plan for how this was all going to go down when it was my turn. I made a lot of emphatic “When I have kids…I/they will never…” statements – you fill in the blank (Yep. And so did a lot of you, so don’t laugh). I was pretty proud of myself and often congratulated the future me on being such a great parent.
When life didn’t quite go the way I had hoped and my journey to motherhood was derailed by unexplained infertility, it should have been my first clue that I didn’t have all the answers. Some of us take longer to learn this lesson than others (Ahem… excuse me while I attend to the naked 4 year old dancing on the table…OK. I’m back). The delay in becoming a parent only seemed to cement me in my preconceived notions. Yes, as a matter of fact, the extra years were only going to help since I was now a wiser, more mature individual. When that second pink line finally showed up on the umpteenth pregnancy test I had taken, I was ready. I was going to crush this parenting thing!
Boy, was I in for a rude awakening! Unfortunately, my kids didn’t get the memo on how they were supposed to grow up. And behave. And stay out of my private chocolate stash. And sleep. Oh sleep – was that ever an elusive thing for the first 3 years!
Fast forward to last week. The week that almost every “When I have kids…” statement was debunked. In one week. Yep, we did it all. Yelling. Screaming – the glass shattering kind, while at someone else’s birthday party. Running naked around the yard (the boys, not me, just to clarify!). Public tantrums. Explosive emotions. Multiple potty references (seriously, I was so not prepared for boys!). Sibling spats and subsequent injuries. Words that became weapons that wounded rather than built up. Too much sugar. Mealtime battles. Bedtime battles. Accidents (The book said if I followed all the instructions they would be potty trained by 2! That was 2 years ago! Who writes these things!!!). Crunchy kitchen floors. Time outs – for ME too. You get the picture. It was the kind of week that left me wishing for a time machine so I could go back to younger me and enlighten her. She didn’t have a hot clue.
No one told me that parenting would be this hard. That I would feel the simultaneous pulsing of fierce, crazy love for these little people and the abject terror and weighty responsibility that raising and teaching them brings with it. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t think it would be a cake walk, but this continual roller coaster of elation and failure with a cork screw triple loop of confusion thrown in for good measure was not anticipated. The longer I am a parent, the more I realize I don’t know. And sometimes, that thought is terrifying! It’s like having all the responsibility of flying a loaded passenger plane, without having any idea how to read the instruments or even how to get to your destination. I often feel like I am flying blind. There are lives at stake here. Lives that my actions and words will affect and shape. And yet, despite all the best plans, I mess it up. Every day.
When the week ended. I was absolutely wrung out and discouraged. Proverbs 16: 9 says “A man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps”. So, as I crawled into bed after the exhaustion of another trying day, I pulled my Bible off of the nightstand, all the while pleading with God for some wisdom or at least a word to comfort my aching heart. I just randomly began to open the pages and verse after verse spoke the same thing.
Then I reached over and opened my devotional for the day and the first words on the page were “Seek My Face”. And that’s when I realized that my week had been a little lean on seeking and long on mindless entertainment. There were a few “snacks” – a hastily grabbed “verse of the day” here and there – but not any actual “meals” in my Father’s Presence. Lots of “help me” minute prayers, but very little communion prayers. Because I was too busy, right? I mean, it was a looong hard week. I needed my downtime. My “me time”. And yet the soft words whispered to my heart again, “Seek Me”. Netflix might be a nice “escape” from reality sometimes or a way to unwind and social media might let you spy on, I mean keep informed about everyone else’s lives, but let’s be honest – we don’t need them and they can certainly account for a lot of wasted time. Time that could be spent invested in true sustenance rather than empty “carbs”. I’ve always believed that we make time for what is important to us, so where does that leave my most important relationship?
Seek: To resort to or go to; to go in search of; look for; to try to discover. In the chaos, we are prone to worry about the unknown. To become quickly overwhelmed by the difficult. To seek solutions to our problems. But, what if we sought the Solution Giver, rather than the solutions themselves? What if we were to look for, go in search of and try to discover who God is? To search for His Presence. To learn about His character. And if we were to do that, what would it look like? And how would it affect our lives? I’d venture to say that one of the biggest effects would be that it would change us. Change how we thought. How we spoke to each other. How we treated the people around us, especially those closest to us. And that could make all the difference in the world. Because maybe in seeking Him we would be able to recognize Him at work in the world around us. Acknowledging Him in the simple beauty that creation displays. Celebrating Him in the good moments and cultivating gratitude. Singing His praises, as the psalmist said. And maybe it would change how we see others. Maybe instead of judging others, we would come alongside and join ranks. Offering a helping hand, a shoulder to cry on or just an understanding smile. Recognizing that LIFE is crazy hard and no one should have to do it alone.
Seek Him. In the mundane and the messy and the magical moments of every day. In the days that make you smile and the ones that have you weeping on your kitchen floor. Seek Him and trust Him to fill in the gaps that we are so woefully inadequate to fill. Seek My Face. That quiet whisper, those words on the page – I need these reminders. Often. Especially since I know that a lot of the time how I respond to my children and their response in return is really a matter of my heart needing some correction. Because I am leading by example, even when I’m not aware. And when I stop seeking my Father’s Presence, I stop imitating Him and my children may be young, but they already know the difference that makes.
The fact is that no matter how long we have been parents, what our preconceived ideas about parenting were, our upbringing, how many books we have read or speakers we have listened to, or how well we think we know our children and how to parent them, we still mess up on a daily basis. We still get bogged down with self doubt and feelings of inadequacy. We still feel alone sometimes. Seek Him. Parenting is crazy hard. But, thankfully we don’t have to do it alone. There is still Someone who never leaves us. Who holds us in the palm of His hand and is there waiting for us to seek Him out once more when we’ve drifted away. Someone who knows my children far better than even I do and purposely entrusted them to me. And maybe if I become His student, He might just teach me a little about how to parent them.
“Moms are not perfect—we are being perfected.”
― Sue Detweiler, 9 Traits of a Life-Giving Mom: Replacing My Worst with God’s Best
Of Shattered Things 