Raising children is...

I am sitting at the dining room table with our youngest.  He is painting and talking to himself.  He has chosen to paint the entire page black, along with his hand and part the table.  I am not reading anything into this.

“This colour… green, this colour… me don’t know, this colour lellow.”

I am so grateful he is content.

He wasn’t a little while ago when my husband left to take the older two to gymnastics. 

He is three and I love all his squishiness and his conversations and his cuddles and his need for me to kiss his eina’s (sore spots that arise when being a boisterous 3-year old).  Just recently, however, he has started testing and pushing and all of those other parenting- a-3-year-old type words. The most jarring moment of late was when he screamed how he wanted another mommy and that I was to leave and how much he disliked me.  This was before he very vocally rejected the food he had chosen and wanted to eat mine.  Did I mention we were at a restaurant?

He was hungry, I get it.  And I am sure it is all probably normal in the realm of what normal is.

He shares a room with our 8-year-old daughter who agonizes many mornings about what she is going to wear.  She is beautiful and spunky and gets so overwhelmed so much of the time.  She is so strong in character, all three of them are.  Lately she has been something like a sledgehammer to my heart.  She is so defiant at times, it’s the anxiety, and so busy, so disinterested.  Yet she is so clever and she is doing so much better learning now that she is being home schooled.

Our eldest son is growing up all of a sudden. I am really enjoying him. He has become an avid reader and is learning with enthusiasm, something that was not happening at school.  School.  By the end of his last term at school he started wetting his bed again, at the age of 9 (I have his permission to share that). He has never enjoyed when my husband and I have a disagreement, but he has started to panic when we disagree.  He is so scared we will be getting divorced.  Each time we explain we to him that we love each other and believe in each other and marriage and we will fight for our marriage, an explanation that always comes too late.

Parenting is so hard.  It is so impossibly hard watching the people you love most be crushed by themselves and the world.  It is equally hard being beaten down by them and their defiance and dissatisfaction and normal child-likeness. 

Psalm 127 The Passion Translation (TPT)

God and His Gifts

127 A song of the stairway, by King Solomon

¹ If God’s grace doesn’t help the builders,

    they will labor in vain to build a house.

    If God’s mercy doesn’t protect the city,

    all the sentries will circle it in vain.

² It really is senseless to work so hard

    from early morning till late at night,

    toiling to make a living for fear of not having enough.

    God can provide for his lovers even while they sleep!

³ Children are God’s love-gift; they are heaven’s generous reward.

⁴ Children born to a young couple will one day rise to protect

    and provide for their parents.

⁵ Happy will be the couple who has many of them!

    A household full of children will not bring shame on your name

    but victory when you face your enemies,

    for your offspring will have influence and honor

    to prevail on your behalf!

I was reminded when I read this Psalm in my Bible reading last week that children are a gift and a blessing.  I particularly like how The Passion Translation puts it, “they are heaven’s generous reward.”  They are a love-gift and keeping that in the front of one’s mind changes the way one parents.

We daily, intentionally, strategically fight for our children and the people they will grow up to be. 

We know well that we could not do any of this life without the gracious love of God. 

Parenting is hard, but it is also rich and beautiful and I am so grateful that I get to experience this life with my children (and my amazing husband.)

Love your people well, friends, fiercely and without abandon.  While it may cost you much, it will gain you so much more.

I hope this finds you well.

Philippa