Littles Under Your Feet

They say the years are short and the days are long, but what they don’t tell you is that when society creates this image of parenting around how much you lose when you become a parent it creates a cycle of discontent in relationships - and that’s just nonsense. 

If you haven’t heard this recently, being a parent is INCREDIBLE. 

Children are an absolute gift, not a burden, and with them comes opportunities that will challenge you to grow into who you are called to be if you take them seriously! 

I firmly believe God uses children to help mature His army of followers. 

Until you’re standing in a kitchen with a mess everywhere on top of an endless to do list during a time crunch and your sweet little drops and breaks a glass jar on the floor that was filled with pasta sauce that took countless hours to harvest, process and can… do you even really have an opportunity in an instant to love like Jesus and practice poring out grace, patience, forgiveness and offer servant hearted, joy filled assistance?  I think not. 

Children really stretch you to be a better version of yourself that you’d never come to on your own. 

And when I break down in my mind the family that God created with grandparents, parents and children - it never ceases to amaze me how incredibly intentional God is with His design. 

As a child you have a different lens. One that you swear you won’t lose as you grow up and point out all the shortcomings of your parents - because you’re destined to be the cool mom or dad. For a lack of a better term, the child version of you is selfish. It’s all about what you like, want, and need. And if you never move on to having children, and you don’t stretch yourself to grow, a part of you stays caught in your own selfish ways. Not always, but often. 

In God’s design - the next step is where you get to a point where you’re ready to start your own family and find a spouse. You’re head over heals in love, say I do, live blissfully in your own reality of what you think marriage will look like and then in an instant you’re caring for your sick wife, renovating a foreclosed house that you decided to tackle while working full time, and you’re chocking down burnt dinners that taste like cardboard - because, well, your wife was just a child a couple of years ago and all of this is new to her. This phase forces you into a season of grace as you navigate the newness of sharing a life, and a space with your spouse. You start to develop patience, increase lines of communication (because odds are you married your opposite) and challenge yourself to grow… all in preparation for what’s designed to come next. 

Then, when you become a parent, your lens shifts again. What you swore you’d never be doing, you’re now happily doing it. You hear yourself speak and hope your mother isn’t in the room to shoot a smirk your way (or maybe you welcome it playfully - because after all she worked hard for you to get to this point 😉) 

Parenting  throws you into the internal battle of sacrificing your needs for others, kind of like the sacrifice God made. Hmm. Interesting. As you grow in parenting, you have the opportunity to grow as a person, too. 

I always joke that the reason children don’t remember the first few years of their lives is because it’s God’s gift of grace to parents to allow them time to navigate parenting and all the growth they have to go through without traumatizing their children too much with their shortcomings. You’re not supposed to know it all before you bring the baby home. It’s a delicate, grow together rhythm that is ever changing. As your children grow up, so do you!

Then, after years focusing on intentionally parenting and raising up the generation that will eventually care for you - you grow into your role as a grandparent - God willing. 

This phase of life will shift your lens once again as you empathize with your children as they walk through similar struggles you’ve overcome. Your job as a parent never ends, you find that your children just need you differently - and you adapt to those changes. 

In the same respect, your role as a child never ends either - it has grown into caring for your own parents as they no longer can care for themselves. You’re caught in an emotional growth cycle that can feel heavy, but is refining you for when it’s your time to surrender your own stubborn ways and allow your own children to care for you. Such a strange, yet intentional shift in the caregiver role that God designed - yet so full circle when you think about it. 

Your lens also has been shaped by those that you have lost. As you age, the list of those who have gone before you has likely grown. You’ve experienced the sweetness of life and the sting of death, and still show up in your own life as a leader in your family despite what you’re walking through. This isn’t an accident. You get to model for your children, yet again, how God’s promise is true and how you are in this world but not of this world. You show up for your children and snuggle their babies and in an instant whatever is bothering you disappears because there is nothing more healing or perspective shifting than the warmth of a young child in your arms who needs you. That’s no accident. 

And then, when you get to a certain point, your children will care for you and continue the cycle with their babies. 

It’s bizarre to think about when you’re sitting at a table writing a blog with a 4 and 6 year old sleeping soundly still needing you completely… But friend, it’s true. 

Each phase of our life is somehow more beautiful than the last and designed purposefully to help Christian’s of all ages into their position as warriors in God’s army. 

Sometimes you just need a second to step back and see the bigger picture so that the overwhelming mess of a life you’re navigating through makes a little more sense. 

And if you’re reading this saying, “that’s not at all the order my life went in”… remember, God makes no mistakes. Your story is intentionally written with you as the main character and what you walk through shapes you for a different purpose. There’s zero judgment here on how your story unfolded. It’s intentional and perfectly designed - hardships and all. 

On my parenting journey thus far, I’ve found that seeing the bigger picture helps me to put aside my own desires for those God places on my heart.

If I had it my way, the broken glass with pasta sauce spilled all over the floor would make me want to explode with helpless anger… but God. 

He has shown me through his Grace in my own life that my desires are not His way sometimes - and I’m so thankful for that. 

Now, pasta sauce on the floor is an opportunity to learn how to clean up a mess with a joyful heart and love on that sweet baby who knocked it over. 

And none of that perspective shift would have happened if I didn’t know God… just crazy!