Musings of Motherhood
Motherhood requires me to set myself aside, over and over and over again. It reminds me daily, if not hourly, that life is not about me… but about the God of the universe. I am a supporting actress in the greater story and my small role is to bring Him glory. God’s amazing design of family gives us the tiniest glimpse into his relationship with us. I am able to better understand how it is possible to love someone deeply and unconditionally who can be disobedient and quite frankly a total mess! Thank you, Lord, for giving me an example of loving my children completely, even when sometimes I don’t even like them!
I willingly have pushed through sleepless nights only to smile when I see the tiny culprit the next morning. I have eaten burnt toast and green coffee in bed (and then cleaned up the kitchen from what looked like a 5 course meal). I have slept on the floor, given up dusting and ignored my own to-do list to help build the ultimate fort using every sheet and extra blanket in the house (and then happily folded them all up weeks later).
As much as my own life has sometimes felt in the second seat, I have often wrestled with what is my purpose as a mother. Is it to answer every call of my name, to give my children their every whim, or to make sure that I am their closest friend? The answer that Good Lookin’ and I have settled on is, NO! No, to everyone of those questions. The purpose of parenting is to grow responsible adults. With that carrot dangling in front of our efforts, we would regularly evaluate the patterns or habits that we found ourselves in and ask, Will this teach our children to eventually be responsible adults?
Long before our oldest entered school, we decided that her ability to read or calculate was not our primary concern in her education. We wanted her to learn the intangible qualities of an outstanding adult. Those qualities of dependability, responsibility, respect for authority, integrity, honesty, verbal communication skills and humility are what we most desired that our children learn. These qualities have to be taught and practiced in order to be learned, and we decided that if we held our children to high expectations around these characteristics, the details of math, reading, writing, and science would follow as well. In fact, our oldest was born a few days before the cutoff date for Kindergarten. This gave us the choice to start her early or hold her out and start her late. Everything in me wanted to get her in school as quickly as possible (for my sake!), but we polled the women in our life that were also born in that month and whether they started school early or late. In our unscientific research we found that of our friends, those that started late (with one exception) exemplified the qualities that we wanted her to have and those that started early did not! So, she spent one more year enjoying childhood learning our expectations of those intangible qualities before we sent her to school to have other adults speaking into her life.
We are continually reinforcing the intangible behaviors that we expect and the grades have been a natural byproduct of teaching our children to… respect authority (do what the teacher says), to be honest and have high integrity (one friend tried to convince our daughter to skip ONE class in high school and Phoebe replied, “Are you kidding, I would have to tell my dad! Have you met my dad?”), to be humble and dependable (they serve others and work hard in the classroom). An education is important to both my husband and I, but we know that any job you get later in life will provide training. If you are teachable, your reading grade level will not matter, and sometimes your specific degree doesn’t either, but your interpersonal skills do! (I always cringe when a mom brags on her kindergartner’s ability to read at a 5th grade reading level… When in high school, what do they say, “My child reads at a 24th grade level”?!)
In pursuit of raising responsible adults, parenting small children can be painful and uncomfortable. It can be hard to make the harder decision that will not show benefit today, rather than the easier choice that will stop the tears. It is so tempting to give in to the loud demands of a toddler but this easier choice will undermine your authority and teach them that obedience is not necessary. All parenting teaches the child a lesson, be sure to ask yourself what you want your children to learn!
And remember, we are not the star of the show! We are to glorify God and parenting well is one way that we can do that.