Month: March 2019

It hit me this week.  It started with me almost puking during an exercise class because I got so winded that I couldn’t breathe.  But it really hit me with what I have lovingly dubbed the “furniture fiasco’. My husband put our couch up for sale on a whim and it sold in an hour flat. That night, we had nothing to sit on to celebrate our victory lap- you know, the last part of the day when the kids are in bed and you get to sit on your couch and watch whatever you want on TV.   My husband suggested we lay on the floor.  I heard myself rebuke his idea with such utter disgust that I knew I had to finally acknowledge what I have been afraid of for quite some time; I am getting older.  My back will hurt, I complained.  I followed with, my hip will do that weird thing where it goes numb when I lay on it to long.  He just laughed and teased me for being an old lady but the truth is,  I am getting o-l-d-e-r.  This is my last year in my thirties.  I can’t think about it to much because it kind of gives me this panicky feeling.  Something about knowing you have probably lived half your life already really punches me in the gut.  I was talking to someone the other day and he told me that he had calculated how many days he had left on this Earth if he lived to be double his age.  I was intrigued so I ran some numbers myself.  If I live 39 more years, I have 14,235 more days to wake up and live.  Giving it a number might seem morbid but it has helped me to put some things about growing older into perspective.

I live loud.  For some people I am always to much.  For others, I am never enough.  I have spent the better part of my life trying to mold myself, my quirks, annoying behaviors and personality into something, someone, to make those people like me.  I have always wanted so badly to fit in.   In my teenage years, I was the outsider who was always trying to squeeze her way into the “in” crowd that had grown up together.  In my twenties, I wanted to be accepted by all the super beautiful girls on campus that seemed to have in all together.  And as an adult, I have sought out relationships, even within my own family,  that I so desperately desired.  The funny thing about life is that it rarely gives you what you think you want.  Despite all the bending and turning I have done to make myself someone I am not, I have never been able to get away from myself.  My constant anxiety and plotting to change to fit someone else’s mold has never, not even once, gotten someone to love me more.

Love me or leave me, I am who I am.  When I get tickled, I laugh obnoxiously loud.  I am not even the least bit funny, no matter how hard I try.  Actually, I am a cheesy nerd who laughs at her own jokes.  I can make a funny situation awkward in about two seconds flat.  I never know what to say in small social talk and usually wind up endlessly stringing a bunch of confusing words together.  I don’t have a good poker face so you never have to guess how I am feeling..my face will tell the story.  I can sound like a snob in social situations because I occasionally forget my raisin’.  My mind moves faster than you can imagine and sometimes it causes me to cut off others in the middle of their sentence just so I can blurt something out.   I am habitually running late.  I have no idea why.  I love hard and wear my feelings on my sleeve.  Some people see me as dramatic because I am expressive and theatrical.  I am impulsive and moody.  My emotions change as much as the direction of the wind.  I am loyal to a fault and will be there for you, even when you don’t deserve it.  I’d rather eat wings and have a Pepsi in my blue jeans than get dressed up and go to a snooty restaurant to eat food I can’t pronounce.  I love a good roller coaster and I’d eat junk for every meal if my husband would let me.  If you invite me to go out on a weekend, I won’t come.  But if you don’t invite me, I’ll be sad and worry why you didn’t.  I will helicopter the crap outta of my kids and lose sleep about things that are out of my control.  I am honest and try to be kind but if I am not prayed up, I can be a little ugly.  I am mess most days but no matter what, I made a promise to myself that this is the girl who is apologetically showing up from now on.

My late 30s have taught me that the people in your tribe will love you hard just the way you are.  They will see your faults, your screw-ups and your awkward moments and will continue to show up, day after day.  They will be there when you need them and even when you think you don’t.  My tribe might not have as many people as I used to think it needed but I wouldn’t trade the people who love me with reckless abandon for a hundred people who are fair-weather family or friends.  Life actually does go by in the blink of an eye and I mourn for all the time I’ve wasted worrying about the people who don’t see the value in me.  In my twenties I had far fewer wrinkles and way less cellulite but I also had far less self-esteem.  In my thirties, my glorious thirties, I have learned to love myself and love those who appreciate the real me.  It hasn’t been easy but with approximately 14,235 more days to leave my mark on this world and live for Jesus, I don’t have time for anything less.

 

 

 

Being a person in today’s world is hard.  Being a parent today is even harder.  Being a Christian parent in today’s world is next to impossible.  The facade of Christian parenting is easy to pull off; cleverly placed scriptures on your social media sites, polished children who sit quietly in the church pews and smile on Sunday mornings, blessings before dinner and bedtime all make you feel like your doing alright.  But the uncomfortable truth is that if that’s all you’re doing, then it’s not alright.  No, parenting children to be warriors for Christ requires so much more.  It requires that we actually train up our children in the way they should go and that is an enormous task.  When a soldier trains for battle, they do it day in and day out.  When a soldier rises in the morning, they condition.  When a soldier puts food into his/her body, they are mindful of what they consume.  When a soldier trains for battle, they practice what they will do should the enemy attack.  You see, training our kids to be Christians in today’s society requires that we show them how it looks with our every word, thought, action and reaction.  Isolated, our family does okay with training.  When thrown into school with their peers however, we are like salmon swimming upstream.  I get so frustrated because I feel like we are among the last of our species, fighting against extinction.   We are parents who have rules that go against the grain.  We take our kid’s phone and check his messages constantly, we won’t let him have it at all hours of the night, his search bar is linked directly with mine so I can see what he searches on his phone, we question him and poke and prod until he gives us information, we check up on his friends and say no when we are uncomfortable with a situation or set of people.  Are our kids perfect?  Lord heavens, no.  I know they aren’t.  I know who their parents are and quite frankly, that scares me because I know what they were capable of.  It’s exactly this reason that we constantly fight against the grain.  I realize my children’s natural inclination is toward evil and not good.  I know that if we want to raise children who love the Lord with all their hearts,  it actually requires catching them in awkward situations at school and with peers, it requires finding out that they looked up something inappropriate on their phone.  If we never intercept their bad actions or catch them just after they have been done, we are losing out on the ability to show them the overwhelming grace of God.  We lose out of the instructional moments that show them how, even at our worst, God can turn a situation around.  If we never acknowledge the sin in our own children, we can never show them the freedom that can be found in Christ.

I’m not trying to discredit anyone’s parenting style.  Parenting really is hard and unless you beat your kids, I promise to never judge.  I have given in to my kids many times even though I knew that I was spoiling them.  I have bailed them out of stuff even though I knew I was doing them a disservice by bailing them out.  I get it.  Maybe you didn’t have much growing up and love to spoil your kids, maybe you are divorced and carry guilt about it so you give in more than you should.  Maybe you fear that your kid will get bullied and made fun of if they don’t have the newest, greatest things like everyone else.  But guys.  Listen.  We are killing each other and ruining our kids in this crazy giving-in-to-their-every-request mindset.  We are taking an already exhausting job and making it so much harder by taking the path of least resistance.  I see it in things my own kids say about their friends at school AND I see and hear it in the things my students at school say and do.  I actually had someone argue with me the other day about constantly checking our oldest child’s phone.  They said I was a “helicopter mom and needed to trust my kid.”  You know what I say to that?  Ha.  Ha.ha.ha.  Why on Earth would I trust my 13 year old kid with a cell phone with unlimited access to the world and all it’s information?  Just Thursday on my way to work I saw a grown woman texting on her cell phone, slowing down the fast lane and a guy who almost killed everyone on the interstate swerving back and forth while he WATCHED A MOVIE ON HIS PHONE.  And this was just on my twenty minute drive to work, with grown ups who know better.  Why would I think my kid wouldn’t use it to do foolish stuff as well?  I know I have been guilty of sending an ugly text or email in the heat of my anger and I bet you have done some foolish things with your phone, too. And don’t get me started on the unlimited access to inappropriate videos and pictures that my 13 year old, hormonal child can get his hands on.   Some of ya’ll have forgotten what it’s like to be a teenager and it really shows.

We are better than this, guys.  We are smarter than this, too.  Our most important job on this Earth is not something we will do at work.  It is raising our children to be the next generation of warriors for the Lord.  And warriors are in constant battle with the enemy.  Warriors don’t need to be spoiled, they need to be TRAINED.  Let’s agree to choose the road less traveled more often than not.  Let’s agree that our kids are worth it and let’s agree that if we see each other’s kids doing something that would put them in Hell, that we will tell the other without fear of offense.  I believe in the next generation of warriors and I believe in US.

Train up a child in the way he should go,and when he is old he will not depart from it.  Proverbs 22:6