Today I want to share a deeply personal story about finding and living the echoes of belovedness in parenting!
This is a story about what became a holy interaction between my youngest daughter, D, and I, though it surely didn’t start out with that promise in it at all! In fact, it felt pretty messy. Nowhere near a beautiful mess … just a mess.
It was Easter morning and the girls and I were getting ready to go to brunch at church before service.
Now, D is a delightful child (after all, that’s what the D stands for 😉 ), sparkly, spunky, spirited, strong-willed, sweet and spicy both. I love her spiritedness; it’s one of my very favorite things about her. I love her fierce strength, and even her stubbornness … oh, so much like mine!
And this was a stubborn moment … not just hers, but mine, too!
There are times she decides, and at the most inconvenient moment (that is, the last five minutes before it’s time to leave, for school or whatever; and do these things ever happen at a ‘convenient’ moment, anyway?!), that she isn’t wearing these shoes after all, only those shoes will do, but those are the shoes her sister is wearing (or the coat her sister is wearing) and no, I won’t wear any other shoes. Or, no, you get these shoes for me and you put them on for me … and then, NO, don’t put my shoes on for me, I want to … Which is wonderful, except then, she doesn’t want to anymore in the next moment! Oh my!
So, Easter morning we had a variation on this theme. I attempted to handle it in the method that has, after much trial and even more error, revealed itself to be generally effective at calmly de-escalating or defusing these situations. This method usually involves a combination of offering a choice and counting to a certain number, making the options clear and giving her time and space to make a choice before the choice becomes mine. It works well – when I remain calm, mindful, and patient!
But it was spectacularly bombing this morning … or rather, I was, really. I felt oddly disoriented and drained after being up in the middle of night (2:00-4:00) for the Easter vigil and I just was failing at the ‘patience and not sounding like a drill sergeant thing!’ Besides, I hadn’t eaten any breakfast yet and I just wanted to get to the brunch and have time to eat! I was most definitely not in calm, mindful mom mode … D was in meltdown mode, and I felt about ready to join her.
But then I felt my own stubborn anxiousness suddenly give way and I said, oh, honey, I just want to get there because I’m so hungry and so tired, and besides, I think I’m just about to cry!
And she quietly said, with a sigh and a sob, me too!
I picked her up, set her on the counter, hugged her tight, and said around the swelling in my throat, Oh, D, I love you … I’m so sorry I haven’t been patient. I’m so sorry this has been so hard for you and me too …
We cried a bit together … and then amazingly, how much better it all became, like a brand new morning! The shoes went on and we left, still in decent time, but even better, with peace in our hearts.
Oh, I certainly felt emptied, poured out, undone as I drove there … but also filled up with reverent gratefulness, for the healing of love, for me and for her.
Gratefulness for the resurrecting and transforming power of love!
Gratefulness that a simple bit of honesty and vulnerability had the power to heal, cleanse, and redeem that painful interaction … to infuse it instead with belovedness.
Oh, I long so much for my parenting to echo with belovedness! For my children to hear belovedness in the way I speak to them, to feel belovedness in the way I interact with them, the way I am present with them, the way I discipline them. That even my disciplining would echo with belovedness …
And that costs me vulnerability, honesty, humility. To be willing to let my children see that in me, to give them that gift of belovedness … and to believe that even when I’ve messed up, the gift of belovedness is still there, for them and for me.
To let them see I am a flawed human being. To let them see me own that, with self-compassion.
To let them hear me acknowledge my mistakes and apologize.
To not be afraid to apologize to them when I was unjust or unfair, when my impatience or irritation toward them had more to do with me, my pride and my unmindfulness than with them.
To respect them enough to be honest with them.
To be real with them. Real enough to let them see my tears and to cry with them.
To be unafraid and unashamed to be an imperfect mother who is still learning … an imperfect mother who also loves fiercely, deeply, vulnerably, whose deepest intention is to become ever more mindful of this love moving in all my interactions with my children, in all my parenting efforts …
To remember more to let go …
of stubbornness, pride, expectations, attachments to what I think my parenting and my children ought to be like …
and to let Love lead,
just as a little child led me Easter morning!