Last Saturday, I pawed through a time capsule of sorts. Let’s call it “parenthood.”
The day before, my second son wheeled his carry-on through security, moving out of our home–to be fair, as we knew what happened when he was wrestled from my abdomen on an unseasonably warm January day 18 years ago. He finished high school in December. It’s time.
My high school and college years hit smack in the middle of purity culture, with all its strengths…and weaknesses.
It’s easier now to see what fell short during those years. But man, was I deep in it. (How many times have I thought about trying to message all the women from that Lady in Waiting study I led?)
I still remember where I stood that Sunday. I must have been three or at the oldest four. The church’s smell of coffee drifted above the part in my hair, crisply pleated lines of men’s suit trousers at my level.
I reached up to take again my dad’s hand, callused and rough from years of farm chores. Yet the chuckle I heard wasn’t his.
The dog licked me awake early this morning. Well, early for my slumbering house of teenagers house. And I stayed awake for the quiet.
As I type to you, snow layers the landscape out my window like fondant. I love its muting effect–on schedules, on sound. My life craves more quiet, for the love of Mike. And the end of the year always seems to hush my own soul into a more contemplative place.
My kids are getting older, which means winter break looks different here. Sniff.
Of course, we’ll still be decorating cookies and mushing together the family clam dip. (It’s a Breitenstein thing.)
But Christmas Eve, we’ll have three different pickups of three different kids: two teenagers have gone for more fun with relatives this week, and my oldest–the Marine–arrives from Camp Pendleton.
Can I tell you something embarrassing? …I’ve been working up to this.
When I was a super-young mom, I was thinking about writing a novel. (I have a different one on my hard drive that will likely never see the light of day.)
A friend asked me a good question in a roundabout way. Let’s say my child is in one of those seasons when they’re hard to love.
…Or even being a jerk.
There’s always this weird tension for me when summer break splats on our family like an ice cream cone on a sidewalk.
The kids are fatigued, even exhausted, from school. Heck, I’m tired from the school year.
Reading Time: 3 minutes
She gave me a gift that day.
Years ago, my friend and I sat on my back porch in Uganda–no doubt with tea or coffee in hand. I was preparing for our first home assignment, and the forecasted meltdowns of at least one jetlagged child in a crowded plane where everyone would be able to sleep if it weren’t for your kid.
Our youngest would have been three, and 20 hours of flying or so makes full-fledged adults want to throw their own fits sometimes.
My friend’s wise words to me that day: “People expect kids to mess up. It’s how the parents handle it that makes the difference.”
I think of God’s words that it’s his kindness that leads us to repentance (Romans 2:4). If my kid did the limp-body thing in the middle of the aisle, bawling when everyone’s hoping to get off the plane, I can scoop him up and whisper in his ear: I know you’re so tired. We’re almost there.
If he hits a sibling in his exhaustion, I can calmly discipline with a consequence, rather than blowing my own top.
(We discipline differently for rebellion than for childishness, no?)
Their inevitable childishness or outright sin is going to happen, despite my perfectionism, control, or vigilance. But what I do with those invitations to love my kids like Jesus?
That’s my (Holy-Spirit-fueled) choice.
Maybe these don’t feel like a huge “aha” to you. But this jewel folded in my hands has offered me comfort–when, say, the principal called to say my son was caught jumping off the urinals in the school bathroom, trying to touch the air freshener.
Or having teens, when I’m discouraged by choices they make.
But that idea doesn’t just extend me comfort. There’s wisdom in expecting our kids to be childish–or even to be sinners. I mean, God actually prophesied that his kids would screw up.
It prevents me from being as crestfallen when I discover my child spit cherry pits on the floor.
Yet, to quote my mom, I’ve learned to always expect your kids are smarter than you think they are. And I’m not just talking about them understanding a great deal about adult dynamics and conversations in a home. See, they’ll also be crafty at seeking out ways to sin.
I mean, we’ve all been in those conversations where you or a sibling reveal to your own parents what you were actually getting away with in high school.
Don’t get me wrong. Yes: Have lofty hopes and goals for your kids. Don’t water them down or dumb them down.
I believe in the “aim small, miss small” philosophy: If we aim for holiness and perfection in our kids, the consequences of them making decisions off that mark are hopefully far less.
And yet, it’s healthy to totally anticipate they’ll mess up, as sinners like ourselves tend to do. (If we don’t, in our shock that our little angels would do such a thing, we might be prone to shame-parenting.)
So my thoughts are these, when my kid acts like a kid:
So when your kid acts like a kid this week? Don’t miss your chance to show them Jesus.
Bouncing Back: Helping Your Child Open the Gift of Failure
Reading Time: 4 minutes
One (just one) of the problems with writing a parenting book is the whisper spitting in my ear sometimes as I parent my oh-so-real-life teens. Like the one who yelled at me across the lawn this morning. (See? I’m wondering if I should have let you know that.)
Enter the Whisper: And you wrote a parenting book?
Even though none of that book hinged on my perfection or my kids’. Even though, as I’ve reread my own words, I wouldn’t reel any of them back in.
(Which says a lot. Often in life are words I wish I could reel in.)
And there’s this: If anything, parenting teens has underlined and added exclamation points all over the spiritual disciplines in Permanent Markers. And not one bit because I was the one to write them down.
I needed to teach every one of those principles to my kids–for this day. Right now. Spiritual disciplines and life skills are one way of preparing our kids, packing their metaphorical backpack for a day we don’t know they’ll need it.
A word picture, perhaps?
I admit to watching all aired episodes of This is Us. In one of the final episodes (spoiler alert, here), principal characters Kate and Toby’s legally blind three-year-old, Jack, is shown navigating the path to their Saturdays at the park.
Kate’s written a jazzy song about how exciting the park is–and all the dangers Jack, with the help of his cane, needs to dodge on the way, from the traffic to the dog turds.
At the beginning of the song, Toby asks if perhaps he and Kate should hold both Jack’s hands. But Kate insists Jack needs to find his way.
From everything to the curb to the buzz of the overhead electrical lines, preschool Jack feels his way to the park.
Later in the episode, the gate to Jack’s room is left unlocked on a different, chaotic day. As parenting days so often seem to be.
And Jack dons the red boots he always wears to the park, attempting to find his own way.
Understandably, the entire family is frantic. But even though Jack has wondered out into the world, and his parents are attempting to swallow sharp chunks of guilt–it is Kate’s song, worn into the ruts of Jack’s memory, that saves his life for an unexpectedly life-threatening afternoon.
That, and the help of a grandma who listened to Jack when he mentioned he always wore his boots to the park.
I cried buckets in this episode.
Because in all the ways I feel powerless as a parent, showing my kids ways to fall in love with God has protected their souls even when they feel out of reach. When I don’t really know where their souls are.
So things like teaching our kids to listen to the Holy Spirit, or to have self-control, or that the Bible is true?
Those lessons have shaped their brains when we as parents aren’t there at all.
Another one of those disciplines–community–has also anchored my kids, when mentors and yes, their grandparents, have gone out to find my kids when I don’t know exactly where to look, and the world feels so big.
Jesus’ Body, too, is a prerequisite for God-honoring parenting.
Like the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15, God has sometimes mapped out a path through a distant foreign land for our kids–in order for their relationship with God to become intimate.
(See, the prodigal son’s heart was far from his dad’s waaaay before he left. Why else would he hurt his dad by taking off with half his dad’s money?)
Please understand me: This is not some underhanded plug for my book. This to affirm you.
The ways you’re teaching your child like Deuteronomy 6 says–in the car, before bedtime, those long chats after school–are singing a song to them, wearing ruts in their brain.
And it’s not just preparing your kids for the good things it will do: So they can teach Sunday School someday, or so they resist temptation at their locker one afternoon, or so they’re ringing a bell for the Salvation Army in the cold at Christmas.
It’s also so they are safer on a dangerous day. So they remember their way.
At the risk of this post being a bit dark: A couple of years ago, I watched my friend progress through the nightmare of her husband’s stage four kidney cancer. From diagnosis to the day she became a widow—and single mother of three—took just over 100 days.
One night, as I transferred the children to their grandparents and we lamented the agony of their reality, her mother remarked that in her mind, she could still see my friend running around in footie pajamas as a child.
I realized we never know what life skills, what knowledge of God our kids might need in the future for which today must prepare them.
The days were indeed long, and the years short when that window was blissfully wide open for me to teach my kids a love of God.
Don’t phone this one in. Keep teaching them God’s ways–for the day you can’t see coming.
What kind of [spiritual] personal training does your child need?
7 Easy Ways to Disciple Your Teens a Little More
Spiritual Life Skills for Kids: Courage (with Book List & Printables!)
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