One of my children recently didn’t achieve the teacher recommendation they needed for another year on student council.
And I felt the tug-of-war in my innards. Part of me ached for the rejection they felt, particularly coming from a teacher who siblings confirmed was particularly difficult. I sought to turn off the ignition to my inner snowplow, shaking off the urge to appeal.
But words from a friend, maybe a decade ago now, bubbled to the surface of my brain. Can getting caught–or discipline itself–be a mercy?
Getting caught: A severe mercy
In my mind, the answer’s a resounding yes.read more
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.
He’s moving in with my (truly wonderful) parents, where the cost of living is cheaper and he can get his first taste of adulthood.
The time capsule
But there I was, last Saturday, pawing beneath the remaining bed of our formerly-stacked double bunks. He’d done most of the heavy lifting, carrying out furniture and tying up a thousand and one loose ends. I wasn’t put out by the under-bed cleanup.
My kids might have cleaned around the edges, though I don’t know that this task had been executed with as much zeal since we moved back from Africa. He was in sixth grade then, his brother in eighth–the one who called me from Guam last week, his first deployment stop with the Marines.
That’s right; my nest is half-empty. Or is it half-full? At one point, I’d had four kids four and under. And just as fast as my house filled, it’s draining.
I’d opened the windows, welcoming the release of winter’s stranglehold on Colorado. And there on my hands and knees, I pulled out the inventory. Including these:
1 issue of Bon Appetit
3 (not 2, not 4) drumsticks, thankfully not the eating kind, yet
1 unopened (again, thankfully), expired can of tuna
1 hall pass
roughly 67 Nerf darts
1 mini-notebook of short story ideas in pencil
1 boot camp journal
4 borrowed DVD’s
5 birthday postcards from Christian summer camp counselors
2 Tinker Toys
1 Lincoln Log
2 K’nex
1 aerobie
1 car snow brush
1 Edelbrock auto air filter
1 coin from the United Arab Emirates
As I pulled out the battered Nerf sword they’d carted around Uganda and back to the States, vanquishing childhood foes, I wondered which was its unsuspecting final battle. All this crumpled school paperwork was no longer necessary with the boys’ diplomas in hand. I imagined the bed creaking as the boys rolled over in sleep, exhaling; its slats are quiet now.
The “after”
I was feeling, am feeling, sad.
(Recently spotted on my Pinterest feed: A meme longing for “a soundtrack on my life, so I can know what the heck is going on.”)
Because yes, it’s the end of an era; cue Stevie Nicks’ “Landslide.” But as perhaps seeping between the lines of my blog posts, you hear I’m grieving motherhood, and what I hoped it would be.
Sidled up beside the late-night talks leaning against kitchen counters, I expected less of the virtually inexplicable anger both of my sons would wrestle with in their later teen years, lobbed toward the closest person in their path (so often, me).
Tucked among the laughs around the table, I expected fewer searing sibling comments lobbed across the linoleum.
I expected more reflection on halcyon days, maybe less on a vague sense of failure.
My parenthood “for God”
It brings to mind the words of Sarah Condon, in Daily Grace. She writes of her Lenten plans:
I would be a more patient mother in the morning.
….This year I was going to get eight hours of sleep and be one of those mothers who bakes muffins in the freaking morning. Big plans. I had a vision of motherhood that included early morning yoga, perhaps some quiet time with the Lord, and constantly smiling at my progeny.
Her son, however, broke his arm on the second day of Lent. “And I realized that my Lent was going to consist of sleeping with a third grader to help him prop up his arm and praying to God he doesn’t accidentally whack me in the face with his cast in the middle of the night. Again.”
She concludes,
So I will not be the kind of mom I had planned on becoming. But God is positioning me firmly in his own kind of motherhood for me regardless.
We always come at Lent [–or parenthood–] like we are going to shape God. Like we are going to tell him about all our willpower and devotion to him…making Jesus an offer he can’t refuse.
Only, he does refuse. God takes our plans and pushes them further… He pulls them apart and pushes them back together.
God’s long game
Over dinner with friends tonight, as my husband spoke of following Christ at age 16, I realized he was the same age my daughter is right now.
If I would have seen him as a high-school student, I wouldn’t have anticipated the vice-president-of-a-missions-agency, the missionary, the church elder. Far more than who he is on paper, I wouldn’t have glimpsed the man who loves God with such an anchored hope, who loves people with intricate kindness. I met my husband at the age my son is now.
Calling any game at the first quarter isn’t done in any sport. There’s so much more to be done.
It’s why a call from my mom lifted my spirits yesterday.
This last week, my son opened a new bank account. Researched and purchased car insurance. Applied for health insurance. Nailed a job. Emptied the dishwasher of his own accord. Drove my parents around a new city, helping my dad after a surgery. He planted trees and flowers in with their landscaping, talked easily with their friends. Rumor has it he’s making his bed and his room is relatively neat.
Like my parenthood, like any child, like me, my kids are a mixed bag of sweeping wins and heart-rending losses. (What would he unearth from under my metaphorical bed?)
Today I’m thankful for a God able to place even the losses in the wins column. A God who brings everything he starts into completion.
And whether the close of this chapter of my life looks like a win for the protagonist or not, I’m grateful to know the Author of a breathtaking ending.
Join the conversation. In what ways has parenthood felt different than you expected?
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.
The past 12 months are on my mind. What just happened? How am I different? How is my family different? What do I love? What do I hope to leave behind? How am I praying for next year?
What has God done in my family? For each of us and all of us, what does he long for?
Forget me not
In Joshua 4, the whole posse of Israel–an estimated 2 million, staggering for the time, and around the size of Greater Chicago–crossed the Jordan. And following moment, the one they waited 40 years for, Joshua stops them.
Take twelve stones from here out of the midst of the Jordan, from the very place where the priests’ feet stood firmly, and bring them over with you and lay them down in the place where you lodge tonight…
that this may be a sign among you. When your children ask in time to come, ‘What do those stones mean to you?’ then you shall tell them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord … So these stones shall be to the people of Israel a memorial forever. (vv. 3, 6-7)
God knew the era of the Judges hovered around the corner: “here arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel” (2:10).
I think God knows our human propensity toward amnesia. Toward forgetting.
So consider performing a yearly Examen–a form of the Prayer of Examen. (Here’s a daily, printable version for families.) Essentially, it helps think through where God has been in the past year–the ways you’ve felt consolation, experiencing God’s presence; the ways you’ve experienced desolation, or things that threatened to separate you.
Writing a year-end note to your child: 4 simple steps
My teenagers are a bit past the printable goal sheets, whether by age or their particular personalities. But this year, I decided I’d write them each a note on Christmas, tucking it in a place they’d find it.
My own hopes were these:
To express my love for them and the value of our relationship, wherever it’s at.
To witness what God’s been doing in them the last year, particularly the ways they inched toward maturity.
To call out ways I see them uniquely expressing God’s image.
To cheer them on in pursuing him.
Now, I’m a writer, so you could either think, “Man, it’s just easier for her,” or, “Hey, you do this for a living. Got tips?” Or both.
Don’t be scared, now
Don’t be intimidated by this. You could certainly type out a version of your note to your child and then handwrite it. (Handwriting, IMO, can be more meaningful and keepsake-worthy, but don’t let that keep you from writing one or making a typewritten one that’s better).
You could also limit yourself to a notecard. Anyone can write four sentences, right? Or, if you’re married, ask your spouse for help on what you might say. (Fair warning: An writers’ adage advises, “It’s easier to be long than short.”)
If your relationship feels a bit broken with your child, this is a chance to reach out to them in sincerity, and maybe even with an apology or repentance on your part.
If your child is young, you know how to talk with them in ways they understand.
Or if they’re very young, consider writing this to place in their baby book or photo album, where they can read it when they’re older.
So let’s break it down. Grab some quick tips to write a year-end note to your child that they might keep in their room, or their heart, for longer than you think.
Open your note to your child with what you value about your relationship. Consider referencing a few memories you made together.
For example–make it sound like you:
Wanted to make sure I let you know how much I’ve loved watching you grow this year.
From [reference memory 1] to [reference memory 2], we’ve laughed a lot and talked about a lot. And I’m so thankful for the ways we’ve…
Reflect the ways they’ve grown.
Hopefully it goes without saying, but avoid the underhanded insult or subtle homily–some version of You’ve really grown past your sarcasm, and [at last] listened to God about your potty mouth.
Question. How are you delighting in your child right now?
As I reflected in When It’s Hard to Enjoy Your Child, I remember a time as an adult when I felt misunderstood and alienated by the world at large. A photo of me with my mom reminded me I brought delight to someone when I felt like could give nothing.
We carry a unique position as their parents to express our delight in our kids. And there’s a certain extent to which God shows us delight isn’t always earned. That covenant love looks for delight when delight is hard.
When it comes to your note to your child, think about these:
What can I appreciate about how my child has changed–however small?
Moses asked God to show Moses his glory (Exodus 33:18). Ask God to show you how he’s been working in your child. If you’re struggling to appreciate or see any “fruit,” or currently are praying for a prodigal (I like this month-long version), see this as an opportunity to hunt down and offer God worship for the things he has done, is doing, in your child.
What positive moments do you remember in the last year? Why were they positive?
Use this note to your child to talk about the ways you see God in them.
How are your child’s strengths–even if they’re totally different from yours–growing into his image, his unique workmanship in them?
Ephesians 2:10 explains, “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” That word workmanship is translated from the Greek poiema, which is where we also derive the English word poem.
If God were expressing himself in poem through your child, what would the world see? His strength, his attention to detail, his drive, his wonder, his courage and advocacy?
Express what you can’t wait to see in your child over the next year.
In your note to your child, walk that razor edge between courageously calling them into what God has for them…and (oops) sermonizing.
I hope this next year finds you leaning even more into God’s Word and all he longs for in you.
Or, I hope 2024 finds you even more “set[ting] the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity” (1 Timothy 4:12). I’ll be cheering you on.
I have no doubt God will be working in your powerfully this next year.
End with expressing your unconditional love for your child. This affirms your note to your child wasn’t about your agenda, but about your overflowing affection.
See? You’ve got this. Even if you boil this down to a few simple sentences or even just a purposeful conversation, keep calling your child “further up, further in.” And in your own love, give them a template for God’s covenant love.
Know someone who might love this post? Forward it on!
Author’s note: One of my perennially best-traveled posts remains Christian, Married, and Attracted Elsewhere. It’s not unusual to be attracted to or feel connection with someone else.
But as followers of Jesus–how do we handle it? Is it kosher to be married and have a best friend of the opposite sex who’s not your spouse?
To be clear, I think it’s 100% healthy to be married and
have friends of the opposite sex. As a married woman, I find such richness in friendships with men, and my husband is a better man because of his true connection in his relationships with women. As a safeguard, he and I communicate openly when we’ve had a connecting conversation with someone of the opposite sex.
Today, I’m grabbing another cup of coffee with you about whether it’s cool to be married but have a best friend of the opposite sex.
Whatcha think? Can I have a best friend of the opposite sex?
Hey. Thanks for your honesty about what’s going on.
Sometimes, when you’re lonely, or things between you and your spouse have changed, or someone just finally gets you, sees you: Feeling known at last feels like a drink of water in a desert.
You feel worthy of being pursued, at last. And worthy of connection. So you might feel this friendship lifts a weight you weren’t sure you could bear.
I can’t fault you for longing for true connection: The longing itself is legitimate.
When God said it wasn’t good for man (…or woman) to be alone, he was hinting at the way we were made for community.
Because he is community.
You read that right. Three persons, acting as such intimate community, they’re one. It was the daily prayer, the Shema, of the Hebrews: The Lord Our God, the Lord is One (Deuteronomy 6:4).
And Jesus alludes to his people having that same flawless unity, so the world would see God:
that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. (John 17:21)
Looking at Creation, we see a striking unity in diversity we’re drawn to–dark/light, land/sea, man/woman–that somehow represents God. We long for real connection.
Asking the right questions
So that brings up my first question for you.
How does this person–not your spouse–make you feel? What hunger is finally met?
And that begs more questions. (Heads-up: I’m a question-asker.) I’d love your real answers, so we can cut through to what’s real.
Was your spouse ever that person? What was it like when you first got together?
Hold here for a minute. Around the world, people marry for reasons other than friendship and emotional connection.
Maybe it’s financial stability. Alliance of families or groups. Protection and provision. Or maybe you were young, and you wanted different things, or didn’t know better, or you and your spouse have grown into very different people.
Not everyone marries for love.
And for some, love doesn’t equal “you’re my best friend.”
When you married, it might have looked like, We are committed to each other. We meet each other’s needs. You remind me of my dad. You help me get something valuable to me. We’re pregnant, so why not? I admire or respect you. We make a good couple.
Or even, There’s a significant amount of lust between us.
I could be wrong–but I assume a best friend of the opposite sex happens outside of marriage because something isn’t clicking within the marriage.
Questions, Round #2
That said: I have more questions for you.
If you’re not emotionally connected to your spouse right now, what’s the story of how they become not that person? What’s your marriage like now?
If they weren’t ever that person, why did you get married? Or what else made you fall for them?
How has that become unsatisfying–and/or how has this best friend of the opposite sex become more satisfying?
And finally–
What do you think God thinks of this friendship?
If you’re not emotionally connected to your mate now and you are connected to someone of the opposite sex?
Things arguably get dicey.
Why could a best friend of the opposite sex be dicey?
Your brain and body are now awakened to sexuality. Both will tend to point in that direction as emotional connection deepens with the opposite sex.
God put you together. No matter how you came to be married,
“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” (Mark 10:7, emphasis added)
And your marriage, your faithfulness–that seamless unity I talked about earlier–shows the world how he loves his people. For better, for worse. Whether we are rich or poor or sick or healthy. Until death.
As it deepens, emotional connection with someone else almost always pulls you away at the heart level from your spouse. Your lack of connection with your spouse may become more pronounced or unsatisfactory. That oneness God created for marriage may start to splinter.
You might wish that person were your spouse. (Maybe you can see how seeds of unfaithfulness start sprouting here, deep in the soil of your heart, long before a single button unbuttons.)
Questions, Round #3
Maybe you’re starting to agree with me that for a married follower of Jesus, emotional attachment can be problematic.
If so, let’s continue to be curious. Because unless you think deeper about what brought you here, your heart could keep starving.
When you’re honest, what kind of attraction do you feel toward your best friend? When do you feel it?
How are you pursuing friendship with your spouse? (Is it enough?)
How does your best friend enter into your fantasies? (Check out Matthew 5:28.)
How could these fantasies serve as a map to what you long for–and what God might long to restore in you? (Counselor Jay Stringer’s Unwanted: How Sexual Brokenness Reveals Our Way to Healingcomes highly recommended to me, and so far I love what I’m reading.)
Would you want your spouse to have these thoughts and this connection with someone else? (And I’m not talking just so you could feel better about this friendship. Nice try.)
What should I do?
If you’re getting the idea I don’t think you can pursue a healthy marriage and a best friend of the opposite sex?
You’d be right.
And it’s time to break ties.
Yep. Every. One. (Check out Matthew 5:29, if you think this is extreme.)
Allow me an example here. When my family lived in Africa, any time my kids would get a fever (and there were plenty), I had to prick their finger to test for malaria with these small, pregnancy-test-looking kits. You can imagine how fun that was with a sick toddler.
During our time there, a man came on a short-term trip during our tenure. He developed the symptoms, but failed to test and treat.
His family, stunned, had to retrieve his body at the airport.
Malaria is a parasite, see. It consumes the blood of the infected.
And emotional affairs can be similarly swift and fatal—partially because we aren’t honest about them with ourselves. With God. Jeremiah warns, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (17:9).
Got a best friend of the opposite sex? Here’s what not to overestimate
Another question.
Do you truly believe God’s ways are the ways of health and flourishing, the best for you and everyone affected?
Do you believe He can be enough, and provide for you, in all you long for?
How much are you willing to put behind that?
Picture Joseph fleeing from Potiphar’s wife, to the extent he left his coat in her hand.
Were there risks? You bet.
She lied to his boss. He lost his job. The whole thing landed him in prison for years. But Joseph chose in that moment to serve God with his whole self.
But again, in the theme of honesty–do you think your heart will be like, “Oh, no problem. I’ll see them now and again, and just start to simmer down.”
James reminds me, “each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire…Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 1:14, 4:7).
And in Matthew: “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” (26:41).
Yes, God gives me ways out (1 Corinthians 10:31). But I’m prone to overestimate my ability.
I know these words probably feel hard.
I hope you can hear how I mean them: As someone who cares about you enough to look you in the eyes and tell you what’s true.
Only us
I’ve been poking around in Song of Solomon lately. A friend recommended its picture of love–including sexual love–for me to explore the imagery of God’s delight in us. It showcases his pursuit of our whole person, and vice versa.
See, Dr. Juli Slattery points out that sex shows God’s covenant love to our holistic selves in four crucial ways: faithfulness, intimate knowing, sacrificial love, and passionate celebration.
The bedroom acts as a microcosm of our whole relationship: What’s showing up in the bedroom illustrates what’s healthy or broken elsewhere.
And one thing we see in the bedroom, as in Song of Solomon, is the beauty of singular focus.
Only you. Only us. This is our secret garden.
How could we be truly singular there–one flesh, one us–in the bedroom, but not singular emotionally?
Would God allow his heart to pull away from His bride? From us, his people?
Your marriage represents God not only to your spouse and your self, but to the world. Pursue the oneness it deserves.
I was chatting on the phone with my oldest this week about purity culture–which deserves a post on its own. (I have feelings. Big feelings.)
I expressed to him how tough it is as parents, when some of the less-healthy methods of purity culture are subtracted from parenting –I’m looking at you, shame-parenting–to find something as powerful to direct our kids toward good and keep them from what’s truly bad.
“I mean,” he said, “I pretty much always know you loved us no matter what.”
I’m fairly open with all of you that though my blog and book are a lot about parenting–there have been a lot of failure and tears on this end. But that–that felt like a holy moment.
Cut to a conversation my husband and I had this morning. Verbally, I realized aloud that for at least our three older kids, God has handed us some significant life moments that ended up being opportunities for unconditional, all-the-way-in, no-way-out love.
Some of those have looked like big confessions from my kids–and inside me, moments my insides felt ripped from top to bottom. Some of those have been moments like my son’s cancer scare, or learning to cope with learning disorders.
Some were no-contest the lowest moments of my parenting.
But in the rearview mirror, they were openings to speak hesed love to my kids.
All-in Love
I’ve written about hesed before.
The Bible Project’s podcast episode The Loyal Love of God describes God’s hesed love–this steadfast, loyal, generous, merciful love characteristic of God throughout Scripture (think of his love as told through the story of Hosea). It takes literally about 13 English words to describe this one Hebrew word.
Now that I know it’s about 250 times in the Old Testament, I see it everywhere. It’s in the last verse of Psalm 23, translated as mercy: Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life…
It also means “covenant love.” Paul Miller describes it as “love without an exit strategy.”
But in the podcast, it was news to me that Scripture tells of people who had this brand of love. And when is that steadfast, God-like love most tested?
In pain, in suffering.
When those we’re loving are being unlovable.
Or as loving gets hard and long.
And when people disappoint us or need forgiveness or patience.
God’s Attachment Love
But–and you can tell I listen to podcasts when I’m working out, trying to ignore the fact I would rather be somewhere else–in my newest favorite podcast, Neuro Faith, I heard neurotheologian Dr. Jim Wilder describe hesed as God’s attachment love.
Wilder described a facility where he worked for those who’d undergone mental and emotional trauma. And those most likely to heal were those with healthy attachments and bonding. It’s the kind of connection of a mother or father to a child, gained through trust, and the child gaining trust that the parent will respond, will fulfill what the child needs.
Weary parents of infants: No, your child will never remember this phase of their lives. And if your kids were like mine, lacking even the positive feedback of a smile for the first months (other than gas, I mean).
But take heart: that attachment lays the cement foundation for their attachments and ability to trust throughout life. Those 3 AM feedings and seven-per-day diaper changes and “conversation” with a preverbal infant matter.
And when Dr. Wilder looked for this kind of love in Scripture, he found it in hesed love.
A Peek at What God’s Attachment Love Means for Your Family
The implications for this are huge. But let me boil down a few.
Even if your parents failed in this area, God loves you with hesed.
Some of your darkest moments in parenting or marriage or your extended family–that failure of theirs, that fear, that loss that rattles your core–are your windows for hesed love.
That hesed love shows our kids in their bodies, their own mental health issues, their own sin, the gospel, even before we say a word. It shows them God loves them no matter what. And he will look for them. (You might like the post “I‘ll find you”: What we long to hear.)
And that means in your greatest areas of shame or loss, God’s hesed is looking for you, too. The Hebrew of Psalm 23:6 implies his hesed hunts us down.
Attachment Love: Questions to Think On
What events in my child’s life have been open windows to show hesed love?
Which of my kids could especially use an experience God’s hesed love right now? Why?
What circumstances/open windows in my kids’ lives right now are opportunities for hesed love? What could it look like for me to show that love in ways that would most connect with my child?
Though your alienation is not at all my intent: Please know that as a parent who longs to find your child, you demonstrating the gospel to your kids in real-life does matter.
Right now. For their lives, their relationships, their faith.
Whether they ever respond or not. (Some of God’s kids did. Some did not.)
Today, my oldest is headed for continued training with the Marines; the 1987 Nissan Z he’s been flipping–the one the still needs the muffler?–sits resignedly outside. My youngest, a delight and a straight-up handful, is with extended family. And thanks to this past year’s new puppy, I’m up early.
So I’ve printed out my yearly prayer of Examen–my third year of a new personal tradition. Like the Israelites standing at the Jordan and choosing stones of remembrance (Joshua 4), I’m looking back at how I’ve seen God writing His story in and around me. And how his presence has met me there.
I’m peering ahead, too, choosing how I want to–in trust of him–walk forward.
In 2023, may you be hounded
Since holding my daughter on New Year’s Eve with her own emotions about the New Year, I’ve been chewing on the final verse of Psalm 23: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
The Hebrew word for “goodness” here is tov–the word God proclaims seven times over creation in Genesis 1. And the word translated “mercy” is actually hesed, a word I’ve explored on the blog before. It means “steadfast love” or “covenant love.” Paul Miller describes it as “love without an exit strategy.”
Like a radial line connecting across the circle of the psalm, the first and seventh cameos form a pair. When David names God as his shepherd, in whom he lacks nothing because of God’s protection (cameo 1), he is saying that God’s tov and hesed are why and how his deepest needs have been met (cameo 7).
When Jesus presents himself as the Good Shepherd in John 10, he deliberately traces himself into the literary circle of Psalm 23, with poetic prose in the same ring composition as the psalm.
But wait! There’s more.
Tov and hesed meet in Christ’s bones, breath, heart, and hands. Jesus speaks in concert with the deliberate parallelism rooted in David’s ancient song. Just as in Psalm 23, the first and seventh cameos in this scene form a pair, but here the literary climax comes when Christ says that the good shepherd gives his own life for the sheep.
….Our truest selves—the selves not bound by time and space or any scarcity—are seated with Christ where tov and hesed are already ours (Ephesians 2:6). And it is as witnesses of Christ’s costly love that we become witnesses of his life filling ours, bringing tov where there is chaos and offering hesed where there has been harm.*
But even more, in the word translated “follow,” “Radaph is the Hebrew word here, and it means to pursue, chase, and persecute…the goodness and love of God hound us.”
Goodness, this way
As your family flips the page to the unknowns of 2023, I hope you’re able to sift out God’s goodness, his attachment love hounding you. I hope you can intentionally choose the peace Jesus has already bought for us and our families.
And even if there’s a lot of fear for the next year?
Though I’m a little surprised this one made it in the best posts of 2022–it’s been awhile since I’ve underwhelmed you with an update on my family. Pull up a chair, and let’s share a cup o’ joe.
To dovetail with my first solo book, Permanent Markers: Spiritual Life Skills to Write On Your Kids’ Hearts (Harvest House), I created a boatload of printables to help kids learn to love Jesus. Though this wasn’t technically one of the best posts of 2022, sounds like it’s still a hit.
So–a lot of women I know are in that window of life where one’s body starts needing repair from growing, then expelling a human.
If you’re not there? Hey, super-fun stuff.
I’ve been reminded wombs, too, bear both the weight of joy and of the curse on this world. And maybe this carries a big exclamation point as I raise four teenagers.
Sometimes I think, Wow. I love this job. My heart could burst with how much I love these people, and how excited I am with the people they’re becoming.
And sometimes I think, Wow. Parenting really, really hurts.
Well. There went my dignity
I mean, parenthood can kind of sweep you into unspeakable joy in a single moment–and sweep away dignity with it, too, from the point that you start peeing on a stick.
Later you’re wearing a hospital gown that’s never stitched up the back, or kind of resigned to strangers seeing all you have to offer (but in one of the hardest, best moments of your life). Or you’re painfully paperwork-pregnant for an adoption.
Then, your toddler threw blocks at another kid in the nursery, but looks enraptured when they see your face.
Or you get a call (the good kind, then the bad kind) from a teacher.
Or your teen says “You’re the best!” and then decides to wear that to school.
When God says “In pain you shall bring forth children”?
Um. Yes. This, I feel.
(Interestingly, psychiatrist and author Curt Thompson makes a case that when God states the curse on Adam and Eve, he’s simply the only one still telling the true story. Thompson suggests that rather than God’s emphasis resting on punishment, God is telling how things will be, must be, because of sin and its shame. The death he told them would come has already begun.)
This part doesn’t really make the index cards of advice they hand out at all those pastel-colored baby showers: Sleep when he sleeps. It’s easy to make your own baby food!
This is going to gut you like a fish.
Greetings, You Who are Highly Favored/Pierced
I’ve thought about all this, though, as I think on Mary, who I may want to grab a latte with in heaven. Man, does that woman have a story.
Even with her carrying and delivering a perfect child, Simeon addresses her poetically, tragically in the temple: And a sword will pierce your own soul, too (Luke 2:35).
A few pages before, she’s hailed as blessed. Favored. It was exclaimed over Mary, too, “Blessed are you among women!” You are favored by God!
And throughout time, she’ll be remembered that way.
You, an unwed mother, will live in the shame of your community, and a near-divorce (Matthew 1:19).
You will flee the country from your son’s intended infanticide, but your friends won’t make it out (Matthew 2:16-18).
Your son will die of the sickest form of unjust capital punishment. But not before you wonder if He’s gone straight-up crazy (Mark 3:21).
Oh, and You will live in poverty, as will your son (Luke 2:24, Leviticus 5:7, Matthew 8:20). The government will execute your nephew unjustly (Matthew 14:1-12), and another one of your sons will also be (as far as we know) tortured to death.
In parenthood, and like nearly every righteous biblical character, Mary is both blessed and pierced.
Your wish list. Burned
Author Scott Erickson writes of her annunciation in Honest Advent(a book I’m currently loving and reading to my teens), “In any divine annunciation, you receive revelation as a gift, yet at the same time you receive notice that all that you had planned is ending. It’s all over. Everything will change–most of all you.”
Erickson continues,
Revelation is a hard gift to receive. You must give up everything else to receive it–like finding a treasure in a field and selling everything you have so you can get that treasure.
But then again, she who is willing to accept the cost of revelation finds herself in the deepest of stories. Stories that are so mysterious, divine, and human that we still tell them today.
May you receive the light of divine annunciation in the flames of your best-laid plans.
The One who wept first
But also, this: In raising children, perhaps especially in raising teens, I understand what God’s parenthood is like; what it is like for an infinite, perfect God to bear children. We hear both his exclamations of love, singing songs over his people–and his poetry of loss.
(God compares himself to women and mothers many times in Scripture, like in Isaiah 42:14, when he likens himself to a woman in labor.)
For God to create mankind was to invite on himself deep pain and sorrow. The metaphor of Mary’s life, and ours, are shadows of God’s own pain in loving and bringing forth life.
Think of the entire book of Hosea, where God tells Hosea to marry a prostitute. It’s a metaphor for God’s people turning from him.
Remember Jesus weeping over Jerusalem, who he wanted to gather under his wings like a hen, “but you were not willing (Matthew 23:37).
Or consider Jesus’ parable of the Prodigal Son; the waiting father there is an image of God.
God knows what it’s like to have children, to have them rip you apart (or perhaps pierce your hands and feet)–and to reiterate over and over again with your love, You are so worth it.
This Christmas, in those moments you’re elated or disappointed in your kids or even in palpable delight or pain–walk with me into worship.
God’s entrance into the world through a woman’s groaning, straining body reminds us his love goes that far; farther.
A few nights ago, I got a call from my son from his military base. Wanna know what was great?
He called me because he had a bad day.
And because he let me into his world and the ways he felt exposed, tossing around some question marks about himself–I got the chance to care for him and eventually even make him laugh.
And this morning–lifting weights as I listened to a new-for-me podcast I’m loving, by Curt Thompson, MD, author of The Soul of Shame–Thompson caused a lightbulb moment for me. He pointed out that vulnerability is a bid for connection.
The alternative in vulnerability? Shame.
We’ve all felt that one, too–our vulnerability creating space for rejection, for harm.
Look at Adam and Eve, Thompson points out. They come into this world naked–vulnerable. And before sin, they were unashamed in that vulnerability.
In fact, he poses, we all come into this world naked and vulnerable. And that’s a bid for connection, right there when we’re squalling and hungry and cold.
“I’ll find you”: I still need to hear it
But my throat caught as I listened to his very first episode on Monday. Thompson mentioned that what we don’t need to be is perfect parents.
Instead, he insisted, what our kids long to know in this world is that someone will always be looking for them; will always try to find them.
We are born, Thompson says, from the moment we open our eyes, “looking for someone looking for us.”
We need to hear, I’ll find you.
The first one to say, “I’ll find you”
I’ve reflected on this so much in the last year, chewing on what I see of God in Luke 15–the three stories Jesus tells of the shepherd who leaves the 99 sheep to look for the one. The woman who lost her coin. And the prodigal son.
He is a God who endures the long struggle to find us.
I felt this profoundly as I recently endured a week that bent me physically and emotionally in half. And after so very many of those recently, my resilience felt so thin you could see through it.
In fact, I didn’t know my way out.
Two things then happened.
My mom–even though I turned 42 last week–emotionally came to “find me” in a narrative of shame I couldn’t shake. For more than an hour, she let me talk about all the things in my head that didn’t sound entirely true, but sure felt like it.
In one of the most vulnerable weeks of my marriage, my husband and I fell in love even more. He came to me in my emotional pit, and didn’t see me as too mucky to go after. He listened. He held me. He came toward me when I felt like a burden, and too weak to benefit…anyone.
And in that vulnerable bid for intimacy of mine, I found connection. And like any of us, that hasn’t always been the case.
Working through Psalm 23 as her scaffolding, Ramsey argues,
When a sheep is lost or hurt, a shepherd doesn’t wait for them to find their way back to the flock. A good shepherd seeks their lost sheep. A good shepherd knows their sheep’s worth and goodness is not contingent upon their capacity to find their own way back home.*
Ramsey poses that every temptation of ours is about reaching for the benefits of connection–security, joy, well-being, belonging–without the vulnerability of a relationship.
I see now that my mom and my husband reaching toward me, especially when I was shrinking away, mimicked God’s own presence to me.
And this is what I think any of us, and especially our kids need to know, need to see, need to hear.
I’m looking for you. I’ll do the hard work to find you.
(Who in your life might especially need to know and sense this about God right now?)
Y’know what’s not a good sign? When there’s water dripping from the light fixture in your downstairs bathroom…when someone’s taking a shower upstairs, in the bathroom right above it.
Oy, vey.
Y’know what I would love? I would love it if mopping up the water in the lower bathroom were to solve my little-or-not-so-little problem.
But alas. I reside in the real world. (Denial is just a river in Egypt.)
So now, with my excess energy from working and parenting, my task was to unscrew the light fixture and peel down the ceiling tiles in the lower bathroom. Then probably the drywall above that, to locate the source of this little leak expanding in the dark interiors of my home.
And I kind of wish this wasn’t a metaphor for parenting, too?
Because my kids’ behavioral problems (or, ahem, mine) rarely just all go away by me addressing the exterior drips, so to speak.
As humans, our hearts tend to leak.
What lies beneath
Take that child o’ mine who’s been mouthy lately. And consider Matthew 12:34: Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.
I love Amy Carmichael’s thought on this:
For a cup brimful of sweet water cannot spill even one drop of bitter water, however suddenly jolted.
So if my kids’ hearts are a glass of lemonade, so to speak, they don’t suddenly spill vinegar. They only spill what’s inside of them. There’s no real “I didn’t mean that.”
Sometimes, my escape from a label–that’s not who my kids really are–is just a thinly-veiled excuse. A classy ceiling tile hovering over a real problem.
So when it comes to your kids’ behavior, chuck denial. Keep asking your kids, and yourself, three levels of why, each one taking off another layer concealing the true heart-leak.
Maybe it looks like this:
Why did they feel the need to mouth off? What heart attitude was beneath that?
Why was this their attitude?
What idol–something prized more than God–were they guarding?
Denial: If only the problem were just the bathroom
Truth: My own leaks—like my clawing for others’ approval, my insatiable appetite to be significant and to achieve—have been some of the most destructive forces to myself.
(In fact, they may lead to my own denial! Sometimes I don’t want to confront what’s really going on in my kids, because “What does their weakness say about me?”)
And I wish it stopped there. But they, or more appropriately I, leave so many people, so much damage, as my untreated leaks rot.
Denial helps no one.
Parenting and the realities of my own heart find me wobbling between courage and defeat. I waver between gratitude that the trajectories of my leaks and my kids might be repaired…and just wishing I could spend a few days at the beach, alone, parts of my body buried in the sand.
Most specifically, my head.
Keep looking deeper
God’s reminded me of the utter blindness sin bestows on us toward our own junk.
Of course there’s a pattern of God covering, lifting, and making short work of shame. Weakness. Sickness. But I have yet to think of an example where first, God didn’t tell the truth. Nowhere do I see God showing us we should pretend weakness doesn’t exist.
I see people bringing their seizing kids or shriveled limbs to Jesus, and stating it openly. I see a pattern of both utter truth and utter trust; of forbidding a false self and exalting a true one.
In fact, one of my favorites is the story of the dad who comes to Jesus. (I think the guy and I might get along.) The dad’s muscled his way through some crowd, no doubt, desperate for his son who convulses and foams at the mouth.
But he lays himself bare: “I believe; help my unbelief!”
The father confesses his own lack of faith. But Jesus? Jesus heals the kid anyway.
I understand, better than I wish I did, the reasons you might be avoiding what lies beneath your child’s behavior.
My daughter was 14 months old when she got glasses and began to wear the felt purple eye patch I’d stitched for her. Coincidentally, it was the same month, she started walking at last and pushed through her first tooth. We’d noticed she frequently went cross-eyed.
It wasn’t until she could talk that the opthalmologist was able to understand she didn’t have a muscle problem. She had a genetic condition from my side called Dewayne’s Syndrome, from a missing cranial nerve.
It’s one of my earliest memories of grief as a parent.
I felt what seemed a silly, petty sense of loss, considering what so many others endure with their kids. But somehow I felt gut-punched. I wanted so many good things for her.
When do you first remember knowing grief as a parent?
I mean that. When did you first sense that your child carried the potential for your own grief?
Before my daughter got glasses, I recall the loss surrounding the birth of my oldest son.
At seven months along, I was laid off–subtracting our insurance, two-thirds of our income, and so much of my identity and sense of security. I gratefully accepted a crib set someone purchased on clearance, setting aside my vision of a classy nursery.
A car accident at 37 weeks put me in the hospital. We owed $500 on taxes, my computer crashed, and my son’s birth went wildly awry–but safely, thanks to God.
My idyllic version of motherhood evaporated before he left my body.
But my son struggled to nurse for the entire first month, and seemed inconsolable for the first nine months. (I kept searching for teeth and re-Googling colic.) He didn’t sleep through the night till after a year.
His face was cherubic. His demeanor leaned toward the opposite.
Grief, continued
Of course I’ve experienced the full spectrum of emotion as he’s grown, and y’know? I decided to keep the kid.
As you read couple of weeks ago would happen, I hugged the waist of my son goodbye this week, cheering him on to boot camp.
Those sculpted pre-military abs beneath his shirt felt so different from the breakable body I tucked into mine after he was born. Or his soft toddler arms with the dimpled elbows.
It still feels weird that he’s taller than me, when he used to fit behind my belly button. (Now his Adidas wouldn’t fit if they tried.)
People have asked how I’m doing with this. And I wish I had a better answer.
He’s on my mind a lot, particularly each morning when I move the magnet on our fridge to the next day of the boot camp schedule.
I’m realizing I experienced more outright grief when he initially signed up. I was just realizing what he, what we all, were committing to—holidays and family time governed by military leave; a delay in his (now paid-for) college education; the culture and danger of military life.
But he’s been leaning toward this for so long. How can I not feel thrilled for him?
My husband came in grinning on Monday night after the call we’d been expecting: My son shouting into the phone a script declaring his safe arrival to the recruitment depot San Diego.
“I’m so proud of him,” my husband—not a gratuitous smiler—said over and over.
So I pray for him throughout the days, like I did this morning when letting the new puppy out at an unholy hour this morning, the sky melting from black to gray.
I thought I might be the parent in tears. Grief assumes so many avatars.
But—perhaps since we’ve had so much stress with our teens in the last year—it feels like another emotionally lade event in the midst of a year of them. So I don’t know if I am numb, or just adding another fierce emotion to my daily slow drip.
He’s reaching for a dream, so that draws away the sting.
“The J-Curve describes the pattern of Jesus’s dying and rising.
“Like the letter J, Jesus’s life descends through his incarnation and then death, and then upward into his resurrection and exaltation. All of the apostle Paul’s descriptions of the gospel in some way trace the pattern of Jesus’s dying and rising. (Rom. 1:3–4, 1 Cor. 15:3–8, 2 Tim. 2:8, Gal. 1:3–4).
“The J-Curve is the map of the Christian life.
“…we should expect a life of dying and rising, that continually re-enacts Jesus’s life.”
I possess an adult choice (not a martyrish one) to descend into death for the people I love, so they can live. My grief as a parent, as a human, is a chance to willfully join Jesus in what it’s like to love humans.
(Jesus said no one takes his life from him, as shown by him walking through crowds who wished to stone him. Instead, he chose when to give it. [John 10:18])
In motherhood, I have found perhaps too much solace in Simeon’s words to Mary in Luke: “And a sword will pierce your own soul, too” [Luke 2:35]).
So the mother of the perfect child knew grief as a parent. She would experience deaths–piercings (not the fun kind)–of her own.
Because what is parenthood if not a series of events both piercing us and making us more whole?
Isn’t that what love is? As Miller reminds, isn’t death, followed by resurrection, at love’s core here on earth?
We might suspect God wants us to leave our pain outside, thank you, during worship. But the Psalmists turn toward God in their loss and the kind of crying that lasts day and night (Psalm 42:3).
(Am I hearing some version of John Legend? Even when you’re crying you’re beautiful, too…)
Even the kind of suffering that asks where God is, and why he’s not acting (Psalm 88:14)
The facilitator loads a backpack with rocks scrawled with permanent markers of losses these people have felt: JOB. FAMILY. SAFETY.
A volunteer walks around the room with the backpack. They can remove the rocks by naming what’s written on each.
They can only cease to carry around the losses when they’ve named them, mourned for them.
Some blank rocks are left in the backpack—because grief is one of those things we realize more of as time goes on. My friend who lost her dad will feel his loss more when she wants to tell someone she’s engaged, or holds her first child.
What parenting losses would you name of yours right now, seemingly insignificant or catastrophic?
Rather than survival mode, we long for more than survival. We can do better.
I can lean into God with my grief as a parent.
Thriving can start to happen only after we acknowledge the griefs of parenting—when we embrace not a false narrative, but the whole enchilada: The crosses, the empty tombs.
I'm totally #thatmom--the one diving into all the weirdness with my kids, sidestepping a few eyerolls.
Pull up a chair for practical ideas and discussions on the parenting, relationships, and spirituality we're all army-crawling through every day. After five and a half years in Uganda, my family and I returned to the U.S., where I write and speak professionally, and we continue to work on behalf of the poor. My first solo book, Permanent Markers: Spiritual Life Skills to Write on Your Kids' Hearts (Harvest House), released October 2021.
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