Loving My Children

Five minutes before we need to go out the door, my toddler walks into my arms with a huge grin on her face and magenta nail polish everywhere. It’s on her shirt, arms, legs, face, fingers…you name it, she’s got it. In the scramble to scrub her skin (a hopeless cause) and change her shirt (for the second time in half an hour), I neglect to check the bedroom from whence she came. Only later do I find the polish painted onto and fully absorbed into the fibers of her bedroom carpet. It was tan. Now it’s tan with pink polka dots of various sizes and shapes. More like a leopard print, but pink. While I’m still scrubbing her skin, peeling off the softened strip near her elbow, I can’t help but remember that it wasn’t really all that long ago that one of her older brothers was two and he decided to empty the contents of my eldest son’s backpack on the floor. This child who will remain nameless dumped all the contents of the backpack, including those previously inside of a bran

Suffering isn’t a stranger to me. Three of my children share the same rare and serious medical condition. In the past year, I was floored by the grief and trauma following a miscarriage that landed me in the emergency room. Financial instability is a regular guest at our table. The suffering that has kept me awake at night and crying out for God’s mercy in recent weeks, however, has been the heart ache of my friends. I’m in a unique season (for me) when multiple loved ones are suffering tremendously. So often there’s nothing I can do but pray, and I’m learning not to underestimate or under-value that phrase—but pray—because while I’m keenly aware of my lack of control to change anything, “ nothing will be impossible with God .” (Luke 1:37) Reading Scripture and praying are the two things I do that ground me, that remind me that even though the earth might feel like it’s shaking beneath me, God is an immovable Rock. This weekend, two of my go-to passages came togeth

My affection and wonder as I watch my baby girl, our fifth child who really isn’t a baby any more but will always be my baby, only increase. I marvel at each new word, facial expression and accomplishment like she’s the first one in the world to ever climb up steps or point to a place that hurts or join her voice to sing a song. Baby, when did you learn to say firefly ? She studies a leaf, bending down to feel how “smooth” it is, and then touches the “rough” bark on a tree root that juts out of the ground by the bulging sidewalk as we walk around the block, the same block I jogged and the same sidewalk on which I tripped and fell when I carried her in my belly. Even now, I’m thankful that God protected her and that even though I fell again another day, she was safe. Now I see her, beside me and not inside me, growing and pondering and declaring her mind, holding her own. I think she’s beautiful and I love her so. Seeing, savoring, observing, even enjoying—thi

Timing couldn’t have been more perfect. Exactly six chairs fit around our kitchen table comfortably, and ours is a family of seven. My baby is now two and the fact that she can climb into her high chair by herself is a pretty good indication that she won’t need it much longer. Just do the math. Where would the baby sit? On my lap? So when my mom texted me to say she had a bench and wondered if I’d like it, it was a no-brainer. We replaced two of our kitchen chairs with a bench that can easily seat three—or even four—small children. Wonderful. Problem solved. Right? Yes and no. If the issue is seating, yes there are seats for everyone around our table; but if the issue is seating, there is a new tension in our family. Who gets to sit on the bench? A provision that solved one challenge has now brought a new one to the forefront, and this time it’s a matter of the heart. I know it’s a matter of the heart because of the desires expressed, complaints I hear, and the tears

I’ve been telling my newly-turned-13 son that I love him every day since the day he was born. Every day. So recently, when I went into his bedroom to say good night and asked him what I thought was merely a rhetorical question, I was caught off guard by his answer. My question was, “Do you know I love you?” Of course he does. He must. I’ve used every love language I know to communicate my deep, abiding love for him. Acts of service? Check. Just consider the mountains of laundry I’ve folded for him and the countless meals I’ve prepared! Gifts? I’ve stretched my wallet to make sure that every birthday and Christmas is more than just socks and underwear but includes items he wants with some surprises mixed in. Affection? He’s never been super touchy-feely, but I surreptitiously made sure this particular love tank was full by including cuddles with books on the couch when he was a toddler and graduating to pecks on the forehead as he matured. Words of affirmation? Aga

My physical context for loving my children has changed over the years. Our family no longer lives in an apartment or a duplex but in a single-family home. Even though I’m still picking sticky pieces of cereal off of my youngest daughter’s pajamas, I’m no longer in the season when more than one child wore diapers and everyone needed help putting on shoes and strapping into car seats. More often than not, when I leave the house with all five of my kids, an older child is putting on the baby’s shoes and another is opening the car doors while I perform a quick scan of the house to make sure the stove is turned off and no water is left running. I see the same thing among my friends, sometimes dramatically. Not only do we walk through different seasons of life with our growing children, but physical and emotional contexts change. Families move for a job. Kids switch schools or go between an education at home and a traditional school context. Marriages crumble and moms (or dads) find

Nine years ago, my husband Scott and I meandered on a dirt path around sheep pens on a dairy farm in eastern Pennsylvania among families enjoying summer vacation. Our two older boys, ages two and four, were spending the night with my parents and our third son was nestled close inside my womb during that anniversary getaway. Scott sipped a chocolate shake while I tried to keep up with my melting ice cream cone and talk at the same time. Excited that there was time to finish a complete sentence, let alone a complete thought, I eagerly told my patient husband a concept for a book called Loving My Children . As a Christian, I knew Paul’s instruction in the book of Titus that older women were to instruct the younger women how to love their children. As a young mom in the trenches, I was aware—sometimes painfully so!—that “loving my children” was something that didn’t always come naturally to me and was something I needed to learn. My bookshelves were lined with parenting books, but