This is the fourth post in a series meant to be preceded by an introductory letter. Please read that here. 

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Foster Intimacy, part 2

“Shame and death are the two great enemies of the Gospel.” ~Jay Thomas

“Much dysfunction is a function of denying brokenness.” ~Ann Voskamp

“Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you. He rises up to show you compassion. For the LORD is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him!” ~ Isaiah 30: 18

As you can see, this post is a “part two.” When I first conceived of writing about intimacy, I thought its value could be summarized in a single post– and then, clearly, realized I was wrong.

What’s more, writing about it for this series has convinced me that an atmosphere of healthy intimacy in the home might be the single greatest gift parents can give their children and the very best means through which we teach our children the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

In the previous post, I described many of its gifts to a growing child and their family, and I claimed that intimacy is invaluable for parenting teenagers. I also described some ways in which Jesus’ teaching enables intimacy when lived out in the home, and that this is key for current and future joy.

But as I said, there’s more to say. So here we go.

The Nature of Intimacy

The best gift of intimacy is joy. We are made to be deeply known and deeply loved, to be delighted in for who we truly are. This is what God does with every individual, and it’s a gift intended for human relationships, too. I think true intimacy is one of the greatest joys of being alive. 

But it must be desired by both parties. Everyone wants it at some level, and children show this innately. In this regard, intimacy feels easy with infants: the physical nature of caring for them bonds us, and they can seem blissfully unaware of our emotional tensions and troubles (more on that to come). But as they get older, they naturally present with difficult behaviors and –unhappily– they are more aware of ours. Within this context, children and parents can pull away from one another.

Which leads to a third aspect of intimacy: it is constantly threatened. We are broken beings. Overworked, overtired, overwhelmed, we fail to be compassionate. Wounded by past relationships, we are insecure. Selfish and self-absorbed, we don’t clearly see the needs of others. 

The vulnerability of family and home exposes our fault-lines. We have tools to help, and the honest apology (as I said in the last post) is chief among them.

But maintaining an atmosphere of intimacy is a responsibility falling chiefly to the grown-ups. As parents, we must deliberately cultivate it–which means we must also look to the ways that we are inadvertently threatening that intimacy. And one of the ways we threaten intimacy is by not tending to our own pain. 

Pain Leaks

Pain hurts because it’s crying out to be dealt with. If our hurt is mild–say, a skin abrasion–we know how to make it better: antiseptic and a Band-aid. The same is true of emotional pain–say, a hurtful remark, for which we might need an apology. But if our hurt is deep, or if it stems from something shameful to us, we might ignore rather than deal with it. The pain is only ours, after all. We can shunt it aside.

This may enable us to function well enough. The wound isn’t healed, but we cope with it by pretending it isn’t there. This is called avoidance. 

The problem is that pain leaks. We all know how it goes: A poor night’s sleep or a bad day at work can readily translate to irritability with others. 

The same is true of unresolved, deep-seated pain, but its impact is more insidious: we have found ways to ignore it, so we are often unaware of how it is impacting others. But just as an untreated wound will eventually infect the healthy tissue around it, my emotional wounds don’t exist in isolation. Sooner or later they impact others, even if the connection doesn’t seem obvious.

The fact is that parents’ pain is visited on their children. This happens in a variety of ways, some of which begin in infancy. Unresolved pain can hinder a parent’s ability to be attuned to the needs of their baby, which can result in maladaptive coping strategies in the growing child. As children grow and mature, their natural egocentrism can cause them to blame their parents’ troubles on themselves, breeding shame that they may not be able to voice. There are other ways, too, that emotional pain in parents harms their children.

No parent intends for these things to happen, and –again– we are often unaware that it’s happening. But our own pain stands ready to hurt others, and our children stand on the front line to receive it. The ensuing pain, passed on from us to our children, erodes the parent-child intimacy that enables children to thrive. 

If we want to foster intimacy in our homes, we must look to our own emotional health.

Emotional Pain and Shame

It’s natural to want healing from physical injury or illness, and we have all manner of ways to find it, from Band-aids to hospitals. In our churches, we also pray for the physical healing of others.

Christ’s life on earth included myriad physical healings; the apostles carried on with the same. Paul names healing among the many gifts of the Spirit. 

But emotional pain has traditionally carried a burden of shame with it. Perhaps we think we should be stronger than this, that we can and should get over it already. Or perhaps the circumstances that caused the pain are embarrassing or shameful, and so we ignore them or wish them away.

It’s a natural and destructive progression. Shame is a lie that compounds an injury. We are already carrying an emotional wound and we are ashamed to be carrying that wound. That shame visits more harm on us while also preventing us from seeking help. Pain begs to be protected. Covering it might seem the only way. And so we walk around with the emotional equivalent of a broken bone or an abscess or worse, and we try to deal with it all by ourselves. Or we avoid it and pretend it isn’t there. 

But remember what we said before: pain leaks. 

Shame and Vulnerability

In order to deal with pain, we have to be vulnerable. We have to expose the wound. We have to turn our own gaze on an ugly, ulcerating injury.

A challenge of emotional pain is that we often don’t know what caused the wound, and we’re afraid of what we might find. Or, perhaps worse, we know exactly what caused the wound, and its exposure will open an appalling vulnerability that we’re not really certain we can bear.

And so shame, left unexposed and unanswered, compounds itself. Like a ripening wound, it expands. We’re ashamed that we’re injured. We’re ashamed of the cause. We’re ashamed to be vulnerable. And so we hide.

That avoidance translates into our relationships, too. We are afraid to be vulnerable, ashamed that others will see our injury, and so we refuse to let others in. This impedes the intimacy we all long for. It creates barriers between us and others– most specifically our spouses and our children. 

Meanwhile the ugly ulceration gets worse. We slap a cupped hand over it and make our limping way through the world, deeply hurt and hurting others.

Here’s what we need: someone who loves us. Someone who understands. Someone who will never be shocked or dismayed by what we have done or by what has been done to us. Someone who will listen. Someone who will continue to unconditionally love. Someone who can wipe our guilt and shame away and make us okay again. 

We need Jesus Christ, whose willing vulnerability led to his death so that he could show us his love.

And maybe we need to see a therapist.

How Do We Know That We Need Help? 

Because of the nature of shame and vulnerability, recognizing our need for help can be difficult. I’m nothing like an expert on the subject; I’ve learned what I’m sharing here from experience (more to follow) and some rich conversations. But in consulting with some professional therapists, I’ve learned indicators we can watch for:

• excessive sadness, anger, or irritability
• food issues
• anxiety
• absence of emotional and/or sexual intimacy with your spouse
• immersion in social media
• overuse of addictive substances

The above may describe any of us at some point or other, so there’s more to consider: Does the presentation of an indicator here create a disruption to you or your family? Would you fight to maintain it? Is it heightened in any way? 

In the fall of 2007, I was teaching full-time and developing brand new curriculum, writing my Master’s thesis (due Thanksgiving weekend with no chance of extension), and mothering three children in grade school. During that semester, when multiple claims held every inch of my time, I also began going to counseling.

Why? Because my husband and I decided that my rare but intense fits of anger were caused by more than obvious stress. They were hints at a deeper emotional problem, one related to my marriage but that we couldn’t see clearly to resolve on our own.

Sure, we all get angry sometimes. Many of us experience anxiety. We may occasionally get lost on Twitter or Instagram. But in paying attention for a good minute, can we see that maybe it’s not just circumstance? These behaviors might actually be a Band-aid, and the injury underneath is beginning to ooze.

In September of 2007, I knew I was in over my head with some anger issues, so I added that weekly appointment. There was no way I had time for it, but I went anyway for the sake of my marriage, my children, and me.

The Gospel and Healing

Pursuing healing for our emotional pain is enormously instructive to our children. From the outset, it shows them that we haven’t reached perfection. No one has, and no one will. In a culture parading false images of perfection everywhere, we can offer ourselves in contrast: imperfect, and honest about it.

Meanwhile, the pursuit of healing models hope: we can all learn and grow. Even in adulthood we can improve–and the need for growth is nothing to be ashamed of. Growth is intended, I think, to be a source of delight.

All of this is Gospel truth. Jesus came to earth because of our brokenness. He understands that each of us bears pain: both from ways we’ve been hurt and the ways we’ve hurt others.

In his suffering, Jesus took on all the shame of the world, so that we never need to be ashamed of anything in his presence. And in his death, he paid for all the sin of the world, so that we can be forgiven for anything when we ask.

The gospel of Jesus Christ is about healing. But when we don’t seek healing for our emotional wounds, we wound our children and we limit our vulnerability to them, marring our intimacy with them. And we also inadvertently tell them a lie: that Jesus is inadequate to help us face our pain, expose our vulnerability, and heal our shame.

My therapist helped me and my husband immensely over those months of counseling, and since then, my husband and I have gone to counseling together and will do so again. I’m growing. He’s growing. But we’ll never be perfect. 

None of us will. We can never create perfect worlds of intimate harmony for our children. Pursuing help is the best we can do, and when we do, we tell our children these gospel truths: Christ is the ultimate source of all healing, and all of our hope is in him. 

The post Teaching the Gospel to Children: Foster Intimacy, part 2 appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

Foster Intimacy

“Daring greatly means the courage to be vulnerable. It means to show up and be seen. To ask for what you need. To talk about how you’re feeling. To have the hard conversations.” ~ Brene Brown

“Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” ~ 1 Corinthians 13: 12

“The greatest gift you ever give is your honest self.” ~ Mister Rogers

I took a psychology class in high school in which, among other things, we studied Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Perhaps you know it? It’s illustrated as a pyramid stratifying needs for human thriving.

I’m not sure where Abraham Maslow’s work stands today in the world of psychological theory, but his pyramid makes some sense to me. At the base: physiological needs. They must be met. A starving child will die no matter how much her devastated mother loves her. A person must eat, sleep, be clothed and sheltered in order to live.

simplypsychology.org

The next level is the need for safety. In order to thrive, a person requires a measure of security and stability. We all do better with a fundamental freedom from fear.

Third is the need for love and belonging. This goes beyond mere walls and protection. This is what we hope to get from a home. 

Interestingly, the home that protects us physically, that provides shelter from the elements and a secure residence, actually opens us to vulnerability in a new way, one based on proximity. We live with each other. We know one another’s weaknesses.

And this is why Maslow’s third level, love and belonging, makes sense to me as such. Within the physical safety of the home, one is safer still if one is loved.

Vulnerability and Love

The desire to be loved is fundamental.

And, in that context, the need to be known is essential. After all, if someone says they love you but they don’t really know you, then they love a projection, an idea, a notion of you. They can’t really love you at all.

So in order to be loved, we must be known, which means we must be vulnerable.

Again, a home and a family naturally provide us with some measure of vulnerability. Mere proximity exposes us–and our weaknesses. We know whose shoes stink and who farted during the movie, who scares easily and who gags at the thought of tomatoes.

What we want and need is to be safe within that vulnerability.

Sure, we could hide our shoes and avoid tomatoes, but how much better to be welcomed into the house along with our stinky shoes because we are so much loved and wanted at home that the shoes don’t really matter?

Being known and loved for who we are: that’s what we long for.

Home, Vulnerability, Safety

And that’s what the family should provide. Because we know one another so well–stinky shoes and all–we should love one another well. We may have a front-row seat to farting, but we have that same view onto sensitivity and sense of humor, and the penchants, habits, moles and freckles we talked about here.

Where we are truly and deeply loved, we don’t have to fear our failings and weaknesses. We can live in an honest familiarity that allows us to express our joy and own our guilt. It’s healthy intimacy.

Children reared in this kind of intimacy thrive. They have open communication about their thoughts and feelings without fear of shame. They are honored and protected as individuals. Their home becomes a source of strength even when they are not physically at home. Their confidence in themselves grows, and they can more readily accept and love others.

Intimacy is one of the most powerful and important parenting tools we get. In strongly intimate parent-child relationships, parents can help, support, and guide their children invaluably. This becomes even more profoundly important in the teenage years (blog series on that upcoming). And intimacy is best and most easily established by parents during childhood.

Vulnerability and the Gospel

A beauty of the gospel is that it is built on intimacy. The wise and omniscient God, creator of all life, knows every person individually. He revels in each one’s uniqueness. He knows each one’s faults. And he loves each one relentlessly.

He knows us intimately. By giving us Jesus, he made a way for us to know him, too.

We don’t have to be ashamed of our faults, guilt, or weaknesses because he knows them already and he loves us anyway.

We are all utterly vulnerable to God. In the grace and mercy of Jesus, we are also utterly safe.

Intimacy at Home

In light of these truths, a fundamental way to teach the gospel to our children is to foster intimacy in our homes.

There are lots of ways to do this, and enjoying each other is chief among them: we all feel safer with people who like us. But a few other specific ways also come to mind.

1. Practice apology. Along with those of our children, our faults are exposed in the proximity of home. Even very young children are wise to right and wrong at some level, and an unkindness or wrong from a parent cuts more deeply than that from a peer (more on that to come). When we apologize, we honor our children, showing them that their feelings and perceptions matter. We acknowledge that we are weak, too; that all people are flawed and in need of growth. We teach them that reconciliation and healing are possible. And we underscore that life isn’t about striving for impossible standards, that everyone is just a person: imperfect and priceless, worthy of love and needing to grow. This gift of the apology is one of the greatest gifts my parents ever gave me. They are wonderful people, but every time they failed me–be it with impatience, a cross word, a lost temper–they apologized. Every. Time.
2. Practice forgiveness. When your children apologize to you, forgive them and say so: “I forgive you.” Of course, in the gospel truth of Jesus, forgiveness means that the fault is erased, even though consequence might linger. But for human beings, forgiving doesn’t always equal immediately released resentment. We have to practice that part, too: forgive and let go. Forgiveness doesn’t come naturally to people (me) a lot of the time. It takes practice. One of my greatest regrets in mothering Will is a sometime failure to forgive immediately. I think (hope) it only happened a handful of times, but it doesn’t matter how many: it was terrible. He would apologize for something (“I’m sorry, Mom”) and I, full of frustration, answered, “Me too.” Not meaning that I was apologizing also, but agreeing that his behavior had been regrettable. Ugh. Even now, it grieves me. I apologized to him then and I have again apologized to him as an adult, but I know my frustrated, selfish adult self wounded my little boy. I’m still getting over it.
3. Prohibit unkindness. Being a sibling is difficult, and siblings can be relentless in pointing out and rehearsing one another’s failings. As parents we might find it easy to excuse or overlook this for a variety of reasons, but we mustn’t do it, because everyone needs to be safe within the vulnerability of home. Teasing comes naturally, and children can excuse an unkindness with, “I’m only joking,” but a policy I tried to practice at our house went like this: If it isn’t funny for everyone, it isn’t funny. A seminal moment for curtailing unkindness came when our only daughter, the youngest, was trying to tell her father and brothers something. She may have been only six, which meant her oldest brother was at the edge of adolescence, and for some reason, he was impatient with her effort to express herself. He kept interrupting her, making corrections and criticizing her, when suddenly my husband had a clear view onto what was happening. He turned to our eldest and stopped him. “Nobody talks to my daughter like that,” he said. We look back on that moment as vital for shaping Emma’s place in our family and her sense of self. She was and is just as worthy as anyone (everyone) of respect.
4. Encourage the truth. In order to have real intimacy, children must feel safe to tell us the truth. If their honest revelation–no matter what it is–is met with rejection, dismay, or any of a myriad of negative emotional reactions, their honesty with us in the future will be challenged. This can be incredibly difficult because of what we said earlier: everyone is just a person. Can you help reacting strongly (and negatively) to your child’s honest (and–in your view–bad) news? But here is a place where we are the grown-ups: we have to see to the whole child here, and not just the nature of this confession. Yes, they may present with what seems to be alarming behavior. Yes, they may have done something we specifically told them not to do. But let’s not allow our personal feelings about it color our response. Our gentle, respectful, loving response to an honest admission will enable our children to tell us other, potentially more difficult things in the future. We can best be good parents–guiding and helping our children grow–when we know what’s going on with our children. And this comes best through honesty. Early on, my husband instituted a policy that surprised me at first: our children wouldn’t get punished if they told us the truth. So if we came in from outside and a lamp was broken and a child said it was because they were playing ball in the house (they were explicitly told not to play ball in the house), they weren’t punished because they told us the truth. This was hard for me sometimes: it felt like some other rules were being overlooked, that behavior-and-consequence wasn’t being established. I was wrong: those things were certainly taken care of. But what we were also fostering–very deliberately, with the real wisdom of my husband–was the value of honesty. The safety of being honest was elevated in our house, because honesty is essential to open, intimate relationships, and that’s what we valued most. 

As I said earlier, intimacy is one of the most powerful and important tools we get as parents. In every way, it underscores the fundamental beauties of the gospel. And it lays groundwork that, maintained, can be priceless in helping your children navigate adolescence.

It is also one of the greatest potential gifts of being a family: to know and love deeply, to be deeply known and deeply loved.

The post Teaching the Gospel to Children: Foster Intimacy, part 1 appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

Grow Up.

“Children learn more from what you are than what you teach.” ~ W. E. B. Du Bois

“There’s a world of difference between insisting on someone’s doing something and establishing an atmosphere in which that person can grow into wanting to do it.” ~ Mister Rogers

“My heart says of you, ‘Seek his face!’ Your face, LORD, I will seek.” ~Psalm 27: 8

My parents came for a week after the birth of our firstborn. Our son was born on Thursday and they arrived on Saturday, just a few hours after we got home from the hospital.

During the week of their visit, my mother took care of me and helped us with the baby. She, my father, and my husband also packed up our apartment and moved us to a townhouse, where they proceeded to unpack us again.

By the time they left the following Saturday, we were well on our way to being settled and I was recovering nicely. But I wasn’t quite ready to let them go.

That afternoon, with Bill out on an errand and my parents just departed, I stood with my newborn wailing in my arms, and I cried too.

There we were, otherwise alone in the house and both of us crying, when I realized that someone was going to have to stop crying–and that someone would have to be me.

I had to be the grown-up.

More than Maturity

We all understand that the best-case scenarios find babies born to mature adults, emotionally prepared to rear a person into maturity. Not all babies get this in their parents; not all people are equipped to be parents. And many of us (I’m raising my hand here) learn to be parents along the way.

It’s impossible, prior to the arrival of your first child, to know everything you’ll need to know. We learn as we go. And even though a firstborn schools us in ways the next child(ren) won’t have to, we learn from our children all the time. It’s not enough to be a parent: we learn to be Auggi’s mom or Piper’s dad. The uniqueness I wrote about last week demands unique attention.

I think it’s fair to say that it takes more than maturity to rear a child. What we need is wisdom.

If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does. ~ James 1: 6-8

In light of our need for wisdom, that first sentence there is absolutely fantastic: you need wisdom? Ask God! He’ll give it to you!

But there’s more to it than that. In my isolated paraphrase (just verse 6), God dissolves into something resembling religion, a system of behavior-and-consequence. Here God is a genie or vending machine: I ask for wisdom, he dispenses it. Voila!

The difference between Christianity and religion is that Christianity is a relationship. God is a real person, and we are his beloved (unique and inimitable) children. Among the scads of virtues that make up his character, wisdom–like the rest of them–is not something he totes in a box or jacket pocket, ready to dole out like so much candy. Rather, wisdom is an aspect of who he is, imparted to us as we know him more.

The more we are changed by his love, the more we love. The more we receive his patience, the more we are patient. The more we know his grace, the less quick we are to judge. The more we know his wisdom, the wiser we become. 

The verses following James 1:6 bear this out. We ask God for wisdom, but we must believe he will give it to us. We have to trust that he’ll answer our request. In other words, we don’t sit around waiting for wisdom to hit us between the eyes. We go about our business, trusting God, because we rely on who we know him to be: good, faithful, true to his word.

And wisdom comes. Why? Because God is good, faithful, and true to his word.

If as parents we are paying any attention at all, we know we need wisdom. We also need patience and gentleness and a host of other things.

We need God.

Which leads me to the whole point of this post: parents who want to teach the gospel to their children must absolutely grow up.

Growing Up

Crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good. ~ 1 Peter 2: 1-2

Peter’s words here are an admonition and encouragement to people who already have put their faith in God and in the gospel of Jesus Christ: you have tasted the goodness of God, and you know how delicious, satisfying and nourishing it is. Want more. 

We appreciate the metaphor. If I’d never had a bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit from Bojangles, I would never miss one. But now that I’ve had one, well. Suffice it to say that they come to mind from time to time.

In a similar but far more challenging and satisfying way, the delights we have known through the love of Jesus should make us want more of the same. In craving him, we pursue our relationship with him, and this causes us to grow. We become mature, joy-filled, obedient, faithful servants of the living God who are sources of blessing and comfort to the people and world around us.

Including our children.

How Do We Grow?

So, how is it done? What are the actions that result from the craving Peter recommends?

I’ll be honest:

1. they’re familiar
2. they’re beautiful
3. some upcoming posts will focus on some of them.

But the simple answer is the best: spend time with God.

If you’ve been a church-goer for any time at all, you’ve heard this before: read your Bible. Pray. Spend time in honest joy and pain with people who also have put their faith in Jesus. Be taught from the Bible by people who take it seriously. Receive communion with a full heart.

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

This is all so familiar. And it’s also spot on because of what I said before: Christianity is not a religion. It’s a relationship.

The Relationship

I’ve been married to my husband for almost 30 years. Being with him has made me a less judgmental person because he is less apt to judge than I am. I also have a better sense of humor than I used to because he is funny and has an excellent sense of humor. I hear music differently because of how he appreciates it. I also regard money differently. And entertainment.

These changes wrought by his influence come off the top of my head, but there are other changes, deeper and more vast, that have come from years of being with him, talking with him, learning to see things from his point of view.

Spending time with a person changes you. Same with God–but far more mysteriously, richly, and abundantly than with anyone else.

I’ve known a lot of beauty in my life, but this quiet and real transformation is among the most beautiful things I’ve seen.

Two Additional Notes

1. Peter tells us to “crave pure spiritual milk.” I translate that as having a desire to know Jesus. But just like enjoyment, no one craves anything all of the time. We won’t crave Jesus all of the time. We just won’t. Here’s the thing: I don’t feel like going to the gym all the time, but I go anyway.
2. An important but less frequently made note about pursuing a relationship with God: do what he says. New understanding of him comes through obedience. I’m not exactly sure why or how, but it does. There’s this fabulous moment in John’s gospel where Jesus is once again being confronted by people who can’t figure out who he is. Jesus says, “If anyone chooses to do God’s will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak it on my own” (John 7: 17). In other words, Jesus says that revelation of truth comes through obedience. Mysterious and true and, once again, beautiful.

Growing Up and Teaching the Gospel to Children

I began this post by pointing out our need for wisdom. God, as the father and source of all wisdom, becomes our pursuit as we seek what we need to nurture our children.

But nothing about God is transactional. We don’t seek him to *get the stuff we need.* We seek him, and we get him. Beauty and grace result.

As we grow in Christ, we are transformed by him. Our children might not witness that transformation. Being young, they may not track the changes and growth he is working in us. But they will see the beauty of his life in us. They will live in an atmosphere of increasing grace and mercy because of that life. And this may very well awaken in them a craving to know him, too.

I wrote a post before this one on enjoying our children. Read it here. 

The post Teaching the Gospel to Children: Grow Up. appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

Enjoy Your Children

“Children should be seen and not heard.” ~ English proverb

“The LORD your God is with you, 

He is mighty to save. 

He will take great delight in you,

He will quiet you with his love,

He will rejoice over you with singing.”

Zephaniah 3: 17

“It’s you I like.” ~ Mister Rogers

When we were children, my sisters and I spent Julys with our grandparents. We lived in Pittsburgh; they lived on Long Island. We would travel there at the end of June and my parents would stay for a week, then they would return home while we stayed behind. 

Over those weeks, my grandparents pretty much left us to our own devices. Our grandfather taught us to sail and dive and occasionally took us on errands; we helped our grandmother with chores. But on our own, we walked to the beach and home again. We played with our cousins and some neighborhood children. It was a normal and quiet life, unmarked by special activity: we never once went for ice cream or to the movies, never played a round of mini-golf. Our outings were to church and library, grocery store and, with our grandfather, the lumberyard. For the most part, we lived with our feet in the sand and our noses in books until our parents returned for us at the end of the month.

But one thing was certain about that time with our grandparents: they enjoyed it. They enjoyed us. They wanted us there with them. 

One way my grandmother made this clear was at the start of the day. I remember coming down the stairs looking forward to my morning greeting, because it was always full of delight. “Well, good morning!” my grandmother would exclaim, all smiles, with an embrace as if I had just arrived after an absence of months. My being there–the mere fact of my presence in her kitchen–was for her an exaltation. 

Looking back on this as the mother of grown children, I’m grateful and a little amazed. What a beautiful thing for a child to be welcomed like this, not just at the beginning of a visit, but every day.

It was a gift to be enjoyed.

The Problem with Enjoyment

Fact: (with rare and tragic exception) parents love their children. But do they enjoy them?

Here’s something I’ll bet you’ve noticed about caring for children: it’s daily. Sometimes it’s tedious. It looks like meeting needs and weighing demands, keeping schedules and finding socks. It’s preparing meals and cleaning plates, teaching chores and repeating yourself. Through and under all of this runs a deep and necessary love. It’s that love, in fact, that motivates it all. It’s why you make them brush their teeth and take them to soccer practice.

But it’s that very ordinariness that can make it all lackluster, that can suck the enjoyment clean away. You are tired, they are tired, and if they don’t go to bed five minutes ago, you may very well lose it.

The enjoyment of our children is embattled in another way, too: sometimes we don’t enjoy our children because of our children. I, for one, have known first-hand what it’s like to have my child turn into a screaming dragon in the check-out line at the K-Mart. And while I’m not naming names, I am willing to admit that there was absolutely nothing I found enjoyable about her at the time. 

Our children have tempers. They have moods. They have quirks and tendencies that can amount to maddening. They are mean to each other; they are rude to us; they embarrass us in public places. Their knock-knock jokes stop being funny somewhere near round five or they were never funny in the first place and we are too tired to muster a laugh. What’s to enjoy? 

No one is enjoyable all the time.

And yet I argue that we do best not just to love our children, but to enjoy them. I think one of the best ways to teach our children the gospel love of Jesus is all wrapped up in enjoyment. 

Isn’t Love Enough?

Quick answer: Yes.

But bear with me a minute, because love and enjoyment communicate differently. See: 

When I was in middle school, my dad had to change jobs. Suddenly his daily commute became an hour each way, a tedium that he really disliked.

We could have sold our house and moved to a different part of the city, but he and my mother weighed this option against the needs of their three daughters who were thriving at school and church. To move meant upending this–and they didn’t want to do it. So we stayed in our community and my dad commuted to work, and that commute brought him a lot of stress.

He chose to do this out of love for us–but love can’t always communicate the way we want it to. At the time, my sisters and I couldn’t comprehend his sacrifice. 

Love is essential to parenting, but it can be hard. It provides your meals, your home and your clothes, but it also disciplines you so that you know right from wrong. Love makes you make your bed or write a thank-you note or miss a friend’s birthday party because you’re sick. 

Enjoyment, on the other hand, always communicates joy. And it isn’t just joy in a general kind of way. Enjoyment of a child communicates joy to that child about herself. It speaks approval and delight. It says, “I like you.”

A child who lives with this kind of a blessing is far more likely to believe the gospel, because when we enjoy our children, we are telling them something True.

God’s Delight

The Bible shows us that God delights in his creation. And above all other parts of that creation, he delights in people. Of everything he made in the Genesis account, God said it was “good,” but when it came to human beings, he called them “very good.” 

We’re told that we’re made in God’s image, but that doesn’t simply mean that we are, like him, thinkers and creators. It means that each of us bears his imprint, and uniquely so. We all know this at some level. Deep down, we recognize the inimitable value of the other: no matter how much we appreciate or fail to appreciate someone, we know that that someone is–in a world of billions–irreplaceable. 

Parents know this better than anyone else. 

Which is perhaps a reason why, when God sought to show his love for us, he sent his Son. As Father, he knows what it is to watch a child suffer and die. This was his son, his only child, the one of whom he said, “I am well pleased” (Matthew 3: 17, emphasis mine). The Father delighted in his Son, and this Son in his Father.

And now, through this Son’s death and resurrection, the Father makes himself adoptive parent to anyone who will have him. He wants everyone to be his child. There isn’t an unredeemable soul in the world.

Each person is precious to him. Each person uniquely bears his mark. He knows mole and freckle, penchant and habit. He knows what we enjoy doing. In fact, he made us to enjoy these things, and part of our enjoyment is God’s own pleasure in it.

The Bible says that he counts the hairs of our heads and stores our tears in a bottle. Why? All scripture points to the answer: because we are his delight. 

He enjoys us.

Our Delight

Enjoying our children, then, communicates just a piece of God’s own enjoyment to them. Or, at the very least, it opens a way for them to receive that enjoyment. It makes God’s enjoyment of them more believable. 

Parenting provides us a unique view on to the value of the other. And the truth is, despite their challenging tendencies and our exhaustion, we value our children deeply. We know more intimately than anyone the moles and freckles, the penchants and habits. We know their favorite foods and colors, their ticklish spots and where their scars came from. We delight in their uniqueness, in what makes them inimitably them. 

The trick is in showing them that they are enjoyable.  On any given day we tolerate them. We certainly love them. But we want to actively enjoy them.

Please remember what I said earlier: no one is enjoyable all the time, but here are some thoughts that might help. 

1. Your child wants to be enjoyed by you. While it was natural for my grandmother to exclaim her delight, that might not be at all natural to you. Show your child your delight in whatever way works for you. You might be a hugger. You might be a hair-tussler. You might write notes on the lunch napkin or make pancakes on Saturday mornings. Anything works as long as it’s real and well-received. And the beauty is that children naturally know how to read enjoyment in a wide variety of ways. You don’t have to do what my grandmother did. Your child wants to be enjoyed by you. 
2. Enjoyment of the other expands us. Learn to enjoy what your child enjoys–even if it’s the smallest aspect of the thing. Your daughter may adore playing Lego and you simply can’t abide it; but if nothing else you can appreciate your daughter’s appreciation. And you can work to find something else that you can enjoy with her. 
3. Practice self-care. Despite our awareness of enjoyment’s value, the barriers remain. Fatigue is real, as are the demands that keep us from enjoying one another. As parents and guardians, we need to take care of ourselves. We need breaks from our children just as much as they need downtime. Tending to our needs makes us better able to tend to those of others–and it creates space for us to better enjoy our children. 
4. Establish routines. A means to self-care is to create and live in routine. Regular bedtime works magic for a weary parent–and it’s pretty great for children, too, even if they resist. I wrote more about this HERE. Maybe you’d like to read it.
5. It’s perfectly normal to find your child unenjoyable. Children go through developmental stages that make life difficult for everyone, even themselves. They also go through phases we find maddening (endless poop jokes, anyone?). Be patient with your child and with yourself. Find help in the wisdom of your spouse, other parents, and in the community of your church. Ask for wisdom in your prayers (James 1: 5-7). And remember that parenting not only guides children into adulthood; it also changes and cultivates us. When we bring our needs–in parenting and anything/everything else–to God, he meets, strengthens, teaches, and blesses us with more of himself.

Enjoy!

Last week I spent time with a friend who has been a mother for just over two weeks. As her darling newborn slept in my arms, she told me about her labor and delivery, the trauma and fatigue and nervousness of having this baby.

And we laughed together over the absurdity of leaving the hospital. As new parents, you barely know what you are doing, and yet they send you off as though everything will be fine. And, often enough, it is fine–but maybe you’d like an instruction manual of some sort, a reference guide to consult in those inevitable moments of confusion.

It would tell you when to feed the baby, how to discern an angry cry from a pained one, how to clip fingernails without clipping fingers, how in the world to swaddle.

And, in my opinion, it should have one last little word of counsel, appended to the end of the list. Just a reminder when the nights have been sleepless or when the baby finally sleeps through the night, when you realize you have no idea what you’re doing or when you don’t have the energy to think about it:

This child has been given to you for just a little while, yours to comfort and care for and delight in. Enjoy! 

The post Teaching the Gospel to Children: Enjoy! appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

Last year I was invited to speak to a Mothers Of Pre-Schoolers group on “teaching the gospel to very young children.” I immediately agreed, interested in returning to a subject I haven’t considered in a while. 

But I was surprised by some further dialogue between me and the woman who invited me to speak. She said they were all eager to learn of any resources I had used and might recommend.

Resources? I didn’t recall any specific resources I’d used to teach my children the gospel. Yes, we had taken them to church and Sunday School. We had talked with them about Jesus and sung songs about him and read Bible stories together. But we never had a regular time of family devotions. I had never routinely used a specific Bible story book. 

I was pretty sure that I had no resources to recommend.

Instead, as I thought it through, I wondered if maybe we teach the gospel to our children not only through church and Sunday School attendance, through Bible stories and songs, but also by living it ourselves. 

It seemed to me that the latter was essential. And so I began thinking about those aspects of our lives that might most impact our children’s reception of Jesus. And I began to think about the small world of our homes–the foundational space in which children spend the majority of their time and through which they perceive the world–as having an atmosphere through which Jesus might be understood and welcomed.

We all know that our words can only go so far. What we say–if not aligned with what we do and how we live–will soon ring false. While our children are young, we might believe these misalignments have no impact: for example, my failure to forgive someone who hurt me might not affect my child at all.

But maybe you’ve heard this: “Unforgiveness is like drinking poison yourself and waiting for the other person to die” (Marianne Williamson). We know that a hard heart is a hard heart, that failure to forgive–no matter how far removed the offender might be–impacts us far more than it does the person we’ve failed to forgive. And that hard heart impacts our children–no matter how young–because, as parents, we create the atmosphere our children live in. 

That’s how I began to think about sharing the gospel with children: as an atmosphere. Yes, we teach them, we tell them that Jesus loves them; that he died to save them; that they are, in fact, in need of saving. We take them to church and Sunday School. We read the Bible stories, we do the crafts. We may have the Advent countdown wreath and calendar and candles, the resurrection eggs for Easter. But if we ourselves are not living in a relationship with Jesus that opens us to change by the Holy Spirit, then all that we’ve taught, read, or said to them will somehow and ultimately ring false.

The atmosphere of our homes will show our children that Jesus is beautiful–or it won’t.

Since I began keeping this blog, I have valued it as a place that would be welcoming to everyone: Christians, people of other faiths, and people of no faith. That said, this series of posts is patently Christian. It is also (clearly) for parents, care-givers, guardians, or for those who wish to be. Still, I hope this series won’t alienate anyone. No matter your faith or family, what is true about Jesus is true for everyone, whether or not you embrace it. And by that I mean, in part, that the things I write in these posts will in many ways be applicable to child-rearing even if the parent is not a Christian. The upcoming post about criticism, for example, has meaning for all children and households. It’s also true of forgiveness, as mentioned above. It’s true of wholeness in relationships and in oneself. So if you are a reader of this blog (and especially if you are a parent), I heartily invite you to read–even if you don’t believe the gospel.

Which requires another point of introduction: What is the gospel? The gospel is fundamentally this: peace with God through Jesus Christ. 

It is the basis of Christian belief: 

• that a loving God created this world and all humankind in order to live in a joyous and fulfilling relationship with him. 
• That all people are fundamentally broken and hurting, choosing *not* to live for God but for themselves, which means that each of us is in desperate need of God’s mercy and lasting kindness. 
• That God so deeply desired a relationship with us that he sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to die. 
• That in dying, Jesus paid the price for our rejection of God. 
• That in his resurrection from the dead, Jesus demonstrated God’s absolute power over life and death. 
• Now every person, through Jesus, is offered full forgiveness for their rejection of God and can enjoy a relationship with him in this life and in the one to come, a life in which they are guided by his Holy Spirit to live in faithfulness and growing joy in God. 

Again, you don’t have to believe in the gospel to read these posts, but they will reference it often, because the gospel is not just a system of belief, but the means to a relationship with the living God, and this relationship changes us, heals us, makes us more compassionate and loving. These changes impact how we live in the world and–of course–how we treat our children.

Finally, before I begin the posts themselves, it’s vital that I say this: my husband and I never lived up to all that I’m going to recommend. Never. We certainly tried, but as are the other components of the gospel, that bit about everyone being “fundamentally broken and hurting” is true, and we are no exception. 

No one parents perfectly. Ever. 

These posts are based on my experience as a parent, a friend of other parents, a daughter, and a teacher. They are meant to be an encouragement and a reminder, ways we can check ourselves and think about how we are living in front of our children. We can always do our best, and each of us means to. But all the good that we do–and all the good in this world–comes from the goodness of God. And the more we rely on him in everything–maybe especially parenting–the more we see his kindness, mercy, and joy in our lives.

I’ve thought and prayed about these posts a lot. I’m excited to finally be writing and offering them to you. I welcome comments, conversation, and questions. 

And I pray that reading them is a gift to you and your family.

With Joy,

Rebecca

The posts will be available here beginning on Wednesday, January 29 and will appear thereafter on Mondays. That’s my plan, anyway. 🙂

The post Teaching the Gospel to Children: A Letter of Introduction appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

The holiday season–that busy stretch of weeks between Thanksgiving and the New Year–is often filled with Comings and Goings. Someone traveling somewhere and remaining for a while. Guests. Visitors. We had many. Did you?

Here’s the thing about Comings and Goings: some are more welcome than others. 

We definitely welcomed my parents.

They arrived the day before Christmas Eve and stayed for just over a week. In that window we took walks and ate lots, watched the third season of The Crown and then, hungry for more of England’s royal family, The Queen. We debated politics and theology; listened to Bach and Christmas carols; stayed up late and slept in; made, packaged and delivered Christmas cookies to the neighbors. My father repaired a faulty electrical socket in a bedroom and took lots of pictures. My mother did most of the laundry, cleaned up the kitchen, and played the piano.

It was lovely.

We also welcomed Shanna’s family.

Her parents and two siblings arrived December 20th and left January 2nd. They stayed with Will and Shanna, but we got to see lots of them nonetheless.

We celebrated Christmas Eve with them at Will and Shanna’s house. We celebrated Christmas Day with them at our house. And we celebrated New Year’s Eve together (plus three (most welcome) friends), eating raclette and playing games and finally ringing in 2020 outside at the firepit, where we toasted a new decade and then sang a hymn or two.

We welcomed Bill’s brother Ray, who came to us from Pittsburgh, and also his mother and brother, who live nearby.

All of these were Comings that were, as I said, Most Welcome.

But we also welcomed some Goings.

There was, for starters, the possum on our door step the night before Thanksgiving. Presumably lured by cheeses that cling to empty pizza boxes (stashed en route to the recycling bin), it was captured by my dog when I was heading out the door to borrow corn syrup from my neighbor.

Despite my dog’s having caught it in her teeth (I made her leave it); despite the possum’s proximity to a human’s front door; despite being a wild creature threatened by a dog keenly interested in catching it again, that possum remained. It played dead for hours on our top step, mostly obscured by the pile of empty boxes, but leaving exposed one tight claw and the sharp teeth that circled its open mouth.

We don’t know when it left, but were very pleased that it was gone in the morning.

The thing about Unwelcome Visitors, I’ve found, is that they don’t know when to leave– which was the case with the squirrel that, for a time, inhabited our Christmas tree.

When I awoke a few weeks before Christmas to hear it banging around in our breakfast room, I didn’t know it was a squirrel. I thought it was the cat (our cat doesn’t bang around) or the dog (who was lying on her bed). I certainly didn’t think it would be a wild animal, a squirrel caught in our many-windowed breakfast room. When I came upon it, still blurry with sleep, the squirrel was throwing itself against said windows, trying desperately to get outside.

I called the dog away from the room. And the cat. Then I called my husband. We opened doors and windows (outside it was 30-odd degrees and raining) and did all we could to usher the wild, frightened and somewhat bruised creature out of the house.

So it (logically) ran from breakfast room to living room and hid in the Christmas tree.

The sheriff wanted to carry the tree out and set it free. Durham’s answer (in this instance) to Animal Control, he wore boots and heavy gloves and had Squirrel-in-House Experience. But despite gentle prodding with our broom, the squirrel wouldn’t leave. Yes, it emerged a time or two and raced around, hiding temporarily under the sofa, threatening to go upstairs, and (always) missing the open doors that beckoned it outside. But every time it darted forth, it found its way back to the tree again.

In the end, the tree did not have to be carried out. The kindly sheriff kept at it until–in what was a third or fourth round of mayhem–we assume that it found a door.

We were Very Glad it went.

Yes, we had our share of comings and goings, of both the welcome and unwelcome variety. And we had one other: a Going-and-Coming, a Departure-and-Arrival. But it wasn’t an arrival here. It wasn’t a coming to us. It happened on Christmas Eve, but we didn’t see it.

On Christmas Eve, Emma and her team of nine left Kona, Hawaii for Athens, Greece. As we slept, as we celebrated Christmas, as we enjoyed the quiet Day After, Emma was flying halfway around the world.

She arrived in Athens on December 26th at 5 p.m., and she’ll be there for ten weeks, working with Youth With a Mission to serve refugees. These are people who know Going in ways I’ve never understood it: necessary, frightening, desperate. And their Coming to Greece, too, is likely full of fear. I’m hoping Emma and her friends can bring them some small relief.

We would have loved to have had her home for Christmas, but we’re so glad that she is where she is.

And when she gets home in March, we’ll be overjoyed to welcome her.

All photos by Richard Brewster with the exception of the above, which was sent to us: Emma playing guitar on Mars Hill in Athens.

The post Holiday Visitors appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

Dear Friends,

I wanted to give you something for Christmas. Something free and different.

Yes, yes. I know that everything on this website is free (okay, well, if you click the links to my books you’ll see that the books aren’t free). And the Advent readings are certainly free. But they aren’t different.

Okay, maybe they are different. I don’t know.

I’m starting over.

Dear Friends,

I have a Christmas present for you. And this is for you even if you don’t celebrate Christmas, don’t get Christmas, or even if you are a Bah Humbug kind of person.

I hope you’re not. But still.

This is a Christmas present for everyone: adult and child alike, solitary or in company, at home or away. It’s for anyone who likes words and even for people who don’t realize they do (one of my not-so-secret aims is to show you that you do like words, that you actually love them–did you know?). It’s a gift of something simple, brief, and lovely. Something you can enjoy once or again. Something that will make you think and imagine or that you can turn your mind off to and just let the words come– as they will, as they want to.

(Well-aligned words are Such Lovely Things, don’t you think so?)

Here’s the gift: I’ve read aloud and recorded something Favorite of mine, and I’m inviting you to listen.

What is it? It’s a short story. No. A poem. No. A Memory and a Conversation, a look over the shoulder, a Christmas or ten of them heaped up and then unspooled in a glorious line of words.

It’s Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales.

Who is Dylan Thomas? Dylan Thomas was a Welshman and a poet. He lived a short, loud and inebriated life, and he loved Christmas. He loved his memories of Christmas, anyway–the Christmases he had known when he was a child in (you guessed it) Wales.

He wrote A Child’s Christmas in Wales, and the work is certainly a testament to his love for and fond memory of his childhood Christmases. Well, whether or not he actually loved these memories is, I suppose, up to question, as he died in 1953. We cannot ask him. But this bit of prose certainly suggests that he loved those Christmases Past and snow and Wales in the snow.

Any work of literature mustered up in love is worth something, isn’t it? Add to that Thomas’s adjectives, his specificity, his brilliant and tempered use of alliteration; include his evocation of the child-mind, so richly done in this text; his appreciation of postmen; his love of mystery; his brilliant description of uncles (“there are always uncles at Christmas”) and aunts.

It’s so so good.

And it might be difficult to follow. So allow me to explain that this is a memory, and memories come as they will, right? Often memories lead to other memories in ways that make sense to our minds at the time but that, written out, might be confusing to the one who is following along.

Know that this is what is happening here: someone is remembering his childhood Christmases, and he is doing so in the aggregate: all-in-a-heap. One thought of Christmas past leads to another, and just when you are really and truly settling in to this stream-of-consciousness, you realize that he is now relating these Christmases to someone else–likely a child.

In fact, the way that this narrative becomes a conversation makes one wonder if Thomas is himself one of the uncles he mentions who has been dozing (and remembering) in front of a Christmas fire, and then has been interrupted by a niece or nephew and so begins telling them what he has been reliving in his mind.

It’s wonderful.

And, as I said, it’s for everyone. For people who began their holiday celebrations last night with Hanukah. For people who have never heard of Christmas. For people who celebrate Christmas in the summertime, never with snow. It’s for you and your children, for your baby who can barely crawl. For your great-aunt who might even now be “teetering at the sideboard.” For the uncles who are on their way to your house for the holidays.

Why is it for everyone? Because it’s beautiful–and beauty is for Everyone, most especially at Christmas.

So where is it? See below. Download and enjoy.

Merry Christmas!

With Great Joy,

Rebecca

click here to download

The post A Merry Christmas Gift for You: A Child’s Christmas in Wales appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

Ilya Kaminsky, Dancing in Odessa

At a baby shower in October, I talked with a woman whose younger son had just left home. He graduated from college a few years ago, so this is not that departure. This is a son who has gone and come home and now, finally, has gone away again.

“There just aren’t any opportunities for him in our town,” she explained. So he is off to a larger city to find a job in his field. Off, as we might read from a fairy tale, “to seek his fortune.” He is on his own now, “coming of age” as it were, as he must, as this mother wants him to. What parent doesn’t want to see her child thrive in the world?

Her older son, she explained, moved away years ago. He’s in Chicago and doing very well, she is happy to say. She and her husband are grateful for and proud of both their sons.

They are also trying to become accustomed to this: life with their children grown and gone.

Her throat closed. “Would you please write about this?” she asked, her voice lowered and keen. “There just doesn’t seem to be much about it out there.”

***

I don’t know if there is much written about it or not. I haven’t looked, busy–as I have been–with sending my own children out into the world. Two weddings in two years, and these only two years (give or take) after each of the grooms graduated from high school. Their empty bedroom still holds their furniture; their posters are still on the walls.

I haven’t found time or heart to do anything different with the room yet. But Emma has a bedroom here, albeit an unoccupied one. She graduated from high school in May and in September left home for six months, two and a half of which are spent.

Not that anyone’s counting.

***

“There doesn’t seem to be much about it out there,” she said, but I don’t know if that’s true. Surely there must be books about this transition in life, the whole “empty nest” thing. So many people go through it.

In fact, I have known many people to go through it: nearly everyone who has children. Seems to me my own parents went through it years ago–not that I noticed. I was too busy in those days to wonder if they were sad or missing us. I was married, making a new home with my husband in our apartment, finishing up school and thinking about my life ahead.

If asked, I would have said that my parents were absolutely fine.

I would write about it, I want to say to my friend’s friend, returning to our discussion at the October baby shower. I would write it about it, but what is there to say? One’s children growing up and moving out is the way of things. It’s how they must go. Why comment on it?

Yes, it’s a change. An ending. But it’s not a death. It’s not remotely comparable to those real tragedies abroad or close to home: not a story of horrors in a refugee camp or a school shooting, not a terrible injustice that forever upends all one holds true and good and right.

No, we anticipate the empty nest. We know it’s completely natural. Maybe it makes us sad–but it’s an ordinary sadness.

***

Life with children was an ordinary life. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, just as now. But also on those ordinary days there was school and time for play, sports practices, music lessons, games and concerts and recitals.

We developed routines to make it all run smoothly. During my children’s youngest years, I got up extra early to exercise. When I was teaching full-time, I often stole free class periods to go to the school’s gym. I knew the time with my children was short and, especially in those years, they needed me so much. I wanted to be available.

Routines shifted. We used to tuck them into bed at night. And then came the nights when I lay in bed half awake, listening for the car to pull into the driveway. There’s nothing like the sleep that comes when you know that everyone is home.

Now we have no way of knowing whether or not our children are in bed, because they don’t sleep here. We don’t need to know what they are doing because they don’t need us to know.

Which is not to say that they don’t need us. There are ways in which our children still need us–and one of these is that our children need us to thrive on our own. They need us to be stable and happy and moving along in the world. They need us to be able to proceed without those routines that were built on their needs.

This is difficult, because for twenty or so years, our thriving hinged on their thriving, on meeting their ordinary needs in ordinary ways on ordinary days.

Now we need new ways of being.

On our first night at home after Emma left, Bill and I stood together at the front door before we went up to bed. He locked the door and looked at me. “No one else is coming home,” he said.

If I were to write about the empty nest, I would say all of this. But I can’t write about it–can I?–because I have so much to be grateful for.

All of my children are still alive, of sound mind and body. They are making their way in the world. Not only that, but two out of three of my children currently live right here in my town. If I needed to, I could get to either of their homes within fifteen minutes.

Each of these facts is a gift. For any one of my children, it could have gone some other way. It still could.

In the face of such gifts, is it fair to be sad? To be sure, Bill and I are adjusting, but we are adults. We can handle this. We need to get over it already, move forward in gratitude.

Once I asked my mother how she felt about her children growing up. “Didn’t it make you sad?” I asked her. At this point, I was a mother myself, facing the specter that is now my reality, the empty nest that I can’t bring myself to write about.

My mother’s answer was so wise: she said that she was sad, but that children must grow up; it’s the only way. Any other possibility–a child somehow frozen in her development, stuck perpetually in any phase of childhood–however adorable it is–would be all wrong. “It’s like a record player with the needle stuck in a groove,” she said. Dissonance and static. Loss of (so much) purpose and meaning.

Ask any parent who has had the process interrupted. They know.

***

Yet the truth is that our children in this house framed our days. Nearly all the decisions we made were necessarily tied to them. I took them to the library because they needed books. I took them to the grocery store because they needed food. And people would comment to me as I steered my shopping cart (daughter in the baby seat, two young sons clinging to its sides), “You sure have your hands full!”

And I would answer–every time–“Happily, yes.” Because I loved having them with me in the grocery store. Even when they quarreled (and they did). Even when they asked for things they couldn’t have (and they did). Even when they did not listen to me (and they did not). I loved having them with me in the grocery store because I loved having them.

I knew that their time with me–with us–was fleeting–but it was so ordinary. It was full of frustration and exhaustion and occasional, terrifying doubt. It was full of making meals and cleaning them up again, of doling out snacks and doling out screen time and fighting back fears in the middle of the night because one or another of them had presented with something that might be a symptom of something terrible.

I knew–in this context– that the time was fleeting. But how–again, in this context– does one manage an understanding like that?

And when it all inevitably–even appropriately and beautifully–disappears, how in the world does one write about it?

At the baby shower, we sat in a circle and offered, one by one, a word of advice for the mother-to-be. And so came the perennial encouragement: “Enjoy every moment.”

How many times has a young parent been told this? A parent who hasn’t slept in weeks because of the baby’s teething or newness or stubborn resistance of sleep? A parent whose child’s terrible two’s have extended well into her four’s? A parent who feels themselves on the edge of mental or emotional frenzy because parenting is actually the most difficult thing they’ve ever done?

It is impossible to enjoy every moment of parenting, because not every moment is enjoyable.

Happily, another shower attendee, given her turn to offer advice, gently amended the earlier counsel. “Don’t feel like you have to enjoy every moment,” she said. “That is impossible.”

And yet, there it is: “Enjoy every moment.” I’ll tell you why we say this: to a person, every parent I’ve ever known will tell you that it goes by far too fast. They may very well remember how difficult it was to parent children-at-home, but so many of them nonetheless would wish to have it back.

***

Last week I made Christmas cookies with my mother-in-law, and as we worked side-by-side in the kitchen, she remembered doing this with my children, young teenagers, in this same kitchen a few years ago.

She remembered other times, too: when they were very little and would sometimes go to her house. “I would rent a movie for them and we would make cookies.” She recalled this aloud as she rolled peanut butter dough into perfect balls. “They would spend the evening with me.” And in the next breath: “I want those days back again.”

Christmas is in one week, and this is the first Christmas in twenty-three years that we will wake to a house without children.

I’m not going to write about the empty nest, but I’ll admit that this Advent has been a sad one for me. In truth, I keep forgetting that it’s Advent. I’m taking care of the Christmasy things (gifts, cards, mailing packages), but without any children here it all feels a little half-hearted.

At dusk in previous Decembers, I used to send my children scurrying around the house to turn on the Advent candles in every window. This year I do it myself, making the trek into our sons’ otherwise empty room and saying aloud, every time, as if they were there, “Hello, boys!”

I don’t wish my children home again. I do not wish them little. I’m so grateful for their lives now, for their strength and independence.

But this is how we know the world is broken: the right and natural course of things can also break our hearts.

***

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” John 1: 5

A friend reminded me today that Advent is actually about the broken heart of the world. It’s about everything that’s ever gone wrong: crop failures and mine collapses, and the floods and eruptions that destroy homes and claim lives. It’s about the delusion and wickedness of white supremacy, the terrors of refugee camps, the horror of school shootings, birth defects and infant deaths and terminal diagnoses.

Advent is about every kind of loss, even ordinary sadness.

Because Advent is about the God who knows our need and decided to answer it with himself. The eternal and omnipotent made human and finite: newborn, cold and hungry. He lived in this world knowing perfectly what it was meant to be and how desperately far from perfect it was. Then he paid for the disparity with his life.

And so I think no loss is insignificant to him, no grief too small. He cares more deeply than we do about all of it.

Which means, among other things, that it’s all right to miss one’s children, all grown and gone. It’s fine to be both grateful for their lives and sad that their time at home is over. There is room–during Advent and always–for both gratitude and grief.

That’s what I would say about the empty nest, if I were to write about it.

All photos by Richard Brewster

The post Ordinary Sadness appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

We arrive relieved and a little breathless from the din. We almost didn’t find it; I had considered giving up.

But there it is on 6th Street, just past the tortilla place. Here is something different from the rest of Las Vegas: low ceiling, warm light, a host who enjoys the word “patio.”

He invites us to sit inside, in that low, warm room, or upstairs on the rooftop patio. But it’s “patioooo,” he says, drawing out the “o” because he likes patios or the “o” sound, or because he thinks the patio is where we should sit. And we do.
On that rooftop, the ceiling is all string-lights. Somewhere above them hangs the neon haze of Las Vegas. And above that, presumably, are stars, night sky, ascendant heavens, even (rumored) planets. A satellite blinking along.

But we are grounded at a table for two. And near us, a merry crowd is moored around three tables pressed together.

Theirs is a meal at its close: plates scraped clean, napkins wrung out and exhausted on table-top or under chairs. Wine bottles empty and glasses going that way. Six adults in Las Vegas, but without that glaze-eyed-look. They are laughing, leaning in, bright like string-lights.

And we are talking to our host about the menu, about the restaurant, about nearby Fremont Street and this refuge of warm wood and a menu drawn up by hand.

Then the host calls him over: the young man seated on the corner of the pressed-together tables. He stands, and I see the apron at his waist. He is one of their chefs.

He might be twenty-two. Maybe twenty-four, at the most.

We talk with him for a few minutes. Where he is from, how he came to be here. How he likes living in Vegas, how he likes working here. And they, he tells us, turning his chin toward his shoulder, are his family. Some of them live in town, but that one is his mother, just come to visit, he says, to see him at his new job. She’s going home tomorrow morning, early. It’s been a good visit.

He leaves us, rejoins his family, and Bill and I are happy to retreat to ourselves, anticipating the menu’s implications. I have ordered the salmon; Bill is getting the steak. Our host has insisted on the macaroni and cheese: it’s a family recipe and he is from Wisconsin. But first we enjoy the tempura green beans served with the brilliant miracle they call pepper jelly cream cheese.

From where I sit, dipping beans in cream cheese, Fremont Street’s panic seems almost impossible. The strobe lights, the neon; the girl in glittering bikini turning twenty hula hoops on her waist; the ring and clatter of the slot machines–all of it has dissolved under these lights. Here we have a friendly chef, a kind server, a host who likes words, green beans.

The chef’s family has left their table. They are disbanding, each taking a turn with the young chef in an embrace, a handshake. They move toward the stairs, but I’m not watching them: my salmon has arrived and I am taken with it, with its puree of spinach, with the way salmon breaks and folds so easily in the mouth. And Bill and I are having our Las-Vegas conversation, our wheat-and-chaff conversation, our practice of looking for beauty where much is not beautiful.

That’s when I see her: the chef’s mother, descending the stairs. She is with someone–her sister, perhaps–and that someone is turned toward her, talking. But I watch this mother, who can’t be that much older than I. She is listening to the one speaking to her, but watching her son as she descends the stairs, hoping, I would think, to catch his eye.

She leaves tomorrow early. She won’t see him again this visit. He is talking with a server, his apron hanging at his waist, hands on his hips. He has already said goodbye.

But still I think of her descending, watching her boy, holding–as she can’t help it–those things she knows of his childhood: his love for food, perhaps; the way he learned to make pancakes; the mobile above his crib of the solar system, planets suspended like string lights; the ceiling spangled in glow-in-the-dark stars.

The post Observed at a Restaurant off Fremont Street appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and with that one is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days.     -Annie Dillard

It’s happening again.

It started in late May, and it continues to roll out across my social media feeds through the first weeks of and into the middle of June: the shriek of panic or lament that school is out for the summer.

This doesn’t come from the students, of course. The students are thrilled to be cut loose from the constraints of the school year’s 180 days.

No, the cry comes– to a person– from their mothers, women who work full-time, part-time, away from or at home, mothers who meet the many demands on their lives–in one way or another–in part because their children are in school.

Until they aren’t.

Yes, the school year has ended, and suddenly these children are not neatly and appropriately occupied for six to eight hours a day and are instead unavoidably At Home.

The heart of the maternal need is a simple question: What to do? 

And this blog post intends to answer it.

Or, anyway, to offer something–just a little something–that could potentially be helpful. 

***

First, an acknowledgement:  It might be easy for someone standing on the outside to throw a little shade on these lamenting mothers (“Don’t you want to be with your children?” they may ask, and maybe–can you tell?–they are even snide about it). Because mothers are supposed to revel in motherhood. They are supposed to preside over the lives of their children unruffled and wise, smiling warm and unwavering smiles. They are not, in fact, meant to be people so much as mothers–which is an oxymoronic expectation, but I digress.

Those smug assumptions about motherhood come from people who have never been mothers or who have never observed motherhood closely– or who, having long ago released their now-grown children into the world, remember all of it with an affectionate and overblown fondness that has obliterated the harder kernels of memory.

Parenting is hard. That’s a fact.

And children, newly released from the bonds of school, brimming with energetic demands or rendered dissatisfied and fractious by their freedom, can be a challenge. Even to themselves.

***

So here, another acknowledgement: Children are meant to be enjoyed. I will amplify this and go so far as to say that people are meant to be enjoyed, that beyond meeting the demands of survival (that whole food, clothing, shelter bit), enjoyment is The Thing. Enjoying someone is embodied love: it is saying and showing that the other is terrifically worthwhile.

We should do this for one another, and parents should most absolutely definitely do this for their children.

***

Yet another acknowledgement: No one is enjoyable all the time. And a child, newly released from the fetters of the school’s calendar year, might be uniquely un-enjoyable

• because he is suddenly released from the fetters of the school’s calendar year (and sad/moody/disgruntled about it). (No, seriously, that can happen).
• because she is overwhelmed by the space of days and the newborn freedom to do what she chooses.
• because they are, quite simply, bored.

Children ought to be enjoyed–as ought all people. But with children the stakes are high because they won’t be children long, and so we feel an urgency to enjoy them and a wretched guilt when we can’t.

The thing is (see above), no one is enjoyable all of the time. At the end of the day, children are people.

As are their parents.

***

In light of all this, I have an encouragement for families and especially for the Mother of the Summertime Lament:

Create (and keep) a routine.

I know, I know. That sounds so boring. And after all of this build-up, surely I could have something a bit more thrilling in mind.

But hear me out.

A routine offers structure and predictability–and these things are unbelievably helpful to children. And their parents.

Need proof? Think of Mr. Rogers, who is currently if belatedly enjoying a new appreciation of his work. How did he begin Every Single Episode? With a predictable routine: changing work-shoes and jacket for sneakers and sweater–signs that he was at leisure with the children, giving them his undivided attention. He finished the program the same way, in reverse. And although I was always sorry to see him make his way to that coat closet, he was also meeting my expectations.

For a child, predictably met expectations create a sense of security.

A secure child is a (more) content child.

And a content child is always (far) easier to enjoy.

***

Beyond contentment, routines bring other gifts. For example, they enable better supervision over the use of screens.

Screens, the bedeviling temptation of the summer holiday. They pacify children–until they don’t. I’m sure there are all kinds of studies about screens and boredom and the surprisingly heightened dissatisfaction they

engender as soon as the screen goes off.

Without going into all of that, I think a parent’s best ally when confronting screen use is to limit it, and to be the boss of it, because children typically lack the judgment and control that is helpful to do the same.

With a routine, screen time can just fall into place. As in

• we always have an hour of screen-time as soon as we wake up, or
• we never have an hour of screen-time until we’ve had breakfast or
• we’ve made our beds and
• done the chores for the day or
• something like that.

See? You decide. You be the boss. Your children will be happier that way.

Routines also enable those pesky negotiable things like

• play-dates
• appointments
• outings
• projects

When my children were in middle-to-late grade-school and early-middle-school and I was teaching full-time, our summertime days quickly began to fill up. My children were going in three different directions (because I have three children), and as a result, so was I. Invariably, some-two of them had play-dates on one day and another had play-dates on three other days, and before I knew it, I was never seeing all three of them together.

So I established a routine: Wednesdays were “Mom-days.” They could have play-dates on any other day of the week, but Wednesdays were reserved for the four of us. Then I pulled out my laptop and found Interesting Things To Do all over our town, and I planned accordingly.

Sometimes we just went to the pool. Sometimes we visited a heretofore un-visited historic site.  The library. The museum. The movie-in-the-middle-of-a-summer-afternoon-at-home-and-it-wasn’t-even-raining. Whatever it was we did, that was our day to do it.

It gave them time to do their things, and it gave me time with them together.

I’m pretty sure none of us regrets it.

***

Another perfectly splendid thing about a routine is that it can incorporate things that need to happen.

Example? Summertime assignments, reading or otherwise. I have a daughter in high school, and every summer it seems she has some assignment or two that she is expected to complete during the summer months.

We all know how this can go. Summer brings its own demands and pleasures, and it’s easy to continually push deadlines away in favor of fun. The problem can be that August arrives long before you expected (have you noticed how that happens?), and suddenly everyone is miserable because the workload is too heavy compressed into that time-frame, and the mother IS the heavy, trying to ensure the work gets done.

Everyone is unhappy.

Enter the routine. “We” work on it every Monday afternoon for two hours. Or Mondays and Wednesdays for one hour. Whatever works. The project gets underway (which also magically often makes the assignment less daunting) and then it gets underway some more, and it’s well in hand–even finished–at the end of July.

***

Routines can also meet the need for REST.

What’s that?

You know. Remember? Peace and quiet. An hour or two during which Mom can get some work done or even think her own thoughts for a space.

When my children were young, we had a resting time every single afternoon. Sometimes they had to read on their beds; sometimes they were allowed to play quietly in their rooms. But the quiet and solitude were sacrosanct. And also tremendously helpful. I can’t recommend it enough.

***

I know, I know. Not everyone is a “routine” kind of gal, and that is completely fair. But the beauty of a routine is that it’s a general expectation. You can keep it as carefully or loosely as you choose.

You might be a dawn-to-dusk planner. You may be a one-day-a-week planner. You may need your kids to Just Be Still for an hour every afternoon. So build a routine around those needs and then gently and oh-so-lovingly Stick To It.

Your children will learn to expect the pattern and then– guess what??– you have yourself a routine.

***

Here’s the thing: whether you are a routine-sort of person or not, you want to enjoy your children. And you are also a person, which means limited energy, limited perspective, and demands on your life that may or may not include, be enhanced by, or involve your children.

At the same time, you know what’s coming: Your children are growing up fast. You’ve been observing this already out of the corner of your eye. You know that the days– even the ones that creep by in the present– are going.

So consider building yourself a little schedule. Decide what you and your children need in order for you to have a healthy summer together. Make a routine out of those things you need, want, and hope for.

That routine will be “a net for catching days”–these fleeting days of summer that will be over before you know it. Yes, you can be sure that your summer will slip by, but maybe it will do so while you enjoy it. And your children.

The post How We Spend Our Days appeared first on Rebecca Brewster Stevenson.