To My Younger Self

My year of reflection has begun.  We now have two seniors in high school (twins), and it seems that every day the last 17 and a half years of my life flash past me.  As I watch Jonathan and Jessica getting ready for the commencement of their adult years—signing up for their final year of homeschool with classes like Physics and Government, preparing for their SAT and ACT, and beginning to apply for college and consider their majors, I can’t help but review the last two decades with wonderment at how quickly it went by as well as hope that we have indeed done what God commissioned us to do on that chilly fall day, when we rode gingerly home for the first time and watched for the whole ride to make sure those two little heads were still upright and secure in their backwards-facing car seats.  I now have photo albums and plastic totes bulging with the memories that have filled up our days since that significant moment in 1996.   

           

This review process inevitably exposes the influences that shaped this past season of our lives—many good, some not so good, all of them significant.   A step back from my memory bank allows me to see a trend—a sort of graph that shows my tendency to pull back and forth, like a pendulum, from permissive to harsh, and then back again.  If I could go back to that car ride in 1996 and tell my younger self a word or two . . . it would be about that pendulum.  Beware the pendulum. 

 

Beware of parenting by “books” rather than by “The Book.”  Measure new methods against Scripture.  I remember reading a book once by an author who was later accused of formulating his ideas and then “baptizing them with Scripture.”  No one has the right to take Scripture out of context, no matter how noble their goal may be.  The trend of parenting books in the 1990’s tended to encourage a sort of antagonistic relationship between parent and child, as though our only mission this side of heaven was to establish authority and to win at any cost.  Current trends are reacting to this and seem to be angled toward more permissive, child-led parenting—which is just as unhealthy and dangerous.  Get the Book. 

 

Beware of the pressures that stretch a family apart.  Those early years are priceless.  Be together.  Beware of ministries, friends, jobs, and hobbies that constantly pull you apart as a family.   Your kids will not naturally become just like you.  They will naturally become like those they are with the most.   Fill up those memory banks and give your kids lots of reasons to believe they are loved.   

 

Beware of spoiling.  You love your child more than anyone else does, so don’t leave the difficult work of character refinement up to the bus driver, the principal, or the manager at Moto Mart.  Spoiled children have harder lives than strong children because they are not as prepared for the realities of life.  The Bible offers this singular criticism of King David’s parenting of Absalom:  “And his father had not displeased him at any time in saying, Why hast thou done so?”  (I Kings 1:6).   Absalom died by getting stabbed with lethal darts while hanging by his hair from a tree.  Whatever small displeasure David had spared Absalom by not disturbing him with accountability certainly came back with manifold vengeance! 

 

And finally, beware of pride.  We are not perfect parents.  Beware of defensiveness that doesn’t want to hear what anyone else sees us doing wrong.  Beware of arrogance that can’t apologize to a child for an unjust accusation or a harsh response.  Beware of conceit that wants a child to meet outward expectations and earn public praise rather than focusing on the “hidden man of the heart.” 

 

Young moms,  I know you get tired of hearing us glibly tell you to “enjoy every second” with your little one, as you wipe formula off your sweater and wearily brace yourself for another long night of colic.  Maybe don’t enjoy those difficult times.  But appreciate them.   Someday you will stumble across those tiny pink snuggly pajamas—the ones with the little feet and the formula stain on the front, and you will be thankful that you didn’t give in to the frustration and weariness of those long nights.  You will be glad that you stopped for a second kiss goodnight when she finally drifted asleep, just as the sun was starting to thin the darkness, and that you let your eyes snap a picture of  that still form one more time before you went to bed. 

 

Because when you wake up, she will be grown.  I know.