It’s been one of those weeks. OK, two weeks. We haven’t learned any new verses. We’ve often missed our morning Bible time. I’ve felt inexplicably down, anxious, spacey, and grumpy. And unmotivated. As such, we’ve been listening to a lot of music. I have a Spotify playlist entitled “kids morning songs” that I like to have in the background when we’re around the house together. I find that children’s music serves two main purposes for us.
First, it impacts our atmosphere. I usually like my personality. Generally speaking I enjoy life and smile a lot. I’m also creative and laid back. So usually my personality, alone, can energize a life giving atmosphere in my home. But then there are those mornings. Or days. Or weeks. When I’m having trouble pulling out of a funk I’ll often turn on the kids playlist to help clear the air. Somehow it helps me refocus and smile again. Our most surefire atmosphere changer is singing and dancing to Rend Collective’s “Build Your Kingdom Here.” My kids have no idea that our most passionate declarations of God’s presence are usually being sung when I’m feeling most desperate to experience their reality.
I suppose it might be something like my experience with liturgical or pre-writen prayers. When I’m feeling especially connected to God words pour from my heart with very little effort. But when I’m discouraged or tired I’m often immobilized by the creative energy required to come up with something meaningful to say. It is especially in these moments that I am thankful to adopt heartfelt prayers written by others (my favorite is Celtic Benedictions).
It might also be like a movie’s musical score. Music directs our emotions. If a young woman is entering her home with foreboding music in the background, I’m on edge just waiting for the bad guy to jump out from around the corner. But if she approaches to “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desire,” I’m anticipating an entirely different scene complete with candlelight, red roses, and a man on bended knee. So when I am self-aware enough to know that I want an atmosphere other than the one our moods are creating, turning on our kids’ morning playlist is one of the easiest things I can do to set a different tone.
Second, music teaches. Again, I’m usually a pretty good teacher. But when I just don’t have it in me I’m especially thankful for intentionally chosen music to form the soundtrack of my kids’ days (and very lives!). In the last two weeks, there have been at least three occasions when Adam has asked about some fairly deep theological concept, completely unprovoked except that we were listening to songs about the ideas. The ones I’m remembering were “How will I be a new creation? Why do I have to be last to be first?” and “Mom! Is God’s new world already here?!” Of course, as a teacher and lover of God’s word, there’s nothing that energizes me and pulls me out of a funk faster than my 4 year old coming up with questions like that! So as soon as he asked we had great conversations about it. But I didn’t have to be the one initiating them.
[Update 5/30/18: Today we were having another rough-ish morning. But then Adam again asked, “How can God’s new world already be here but still be coming?” One of my best tricks I’ve learned is to tell Adam that he’s asked a great question and I want to think about it. I did that, today, and an answer quickly followed. “Adam,” I asked, “when you look out the window and see the Envoy in the driveway, what does it tell you?” “That Daddy’s home!” he responded. “And how do you feel when you realize that Daddy’s home?” I asked. “Happy!” He didn’t miss a beat. “OK. So you feel really happy just knowing that Daddy’s home. But he could be in the barn or the garage or even watering trees. Now… how do you feel when you hear him actually walk through the back door?” I asked. He thought about it for just few second before his little face lit up. “Even better!” he exclaimed. Score. I know it’s not even close to a perfect analogy, but I was pretty happy because I think it clicked with him that God’s kingdom in us is already wonderful, but that it will get even better when Jesus comes back to make all things new.]
And as a side note to music’s ability to teach, I’ve also loved using Bryan Moyer Suderman’s songs in our more formal teaching times. This week we were reading about God’s giving of the Ten Commandments and I was able to explain them using Suderman’s song, “When God’s in Charge.” We also regularly sing “I will Bless You” to reflect on God’s covenant with Abraham. Recently Adam was asking why we don’t waste electricity and I used “Get in the Groove” (a song about sabbath) along with a video showing mountaintop removal (an extreme form of coal mining) to talk about how God desires that even the land be given opportunities to rest.
I’ve made my kids’ morning playlist public for Spotify users (a free version can be downloaded from the App store or from Spotify’s website), but anyone can see it and hear shorter clips through my blog. Please share any other artists or groups that your family enjoys in the comment section, along with other ideas for how you “clear the air” in your own home. And I’m finishing with a few photos as evidence that life can be good even when Momma feels grumpy. Today as I looked through my recent photos I was struck by God’s grace displayed in the difference between my emotions and my kids’ experiences, this last week. Here’s to the power of music!
As my son was approaching his first birthday, I designed an independent study in which I reflected on my experience of motherhood from a theological perspective. One of my final projects was a sermon that considered some implications of mothers being created in God’s image for God’s glory. I have grown as a mom since delivering that sermon three years ago and there are some things that I would articulate differently if I were writing this today (though I have tweaked a few things). The biggest difference is that I would do more to emphasize my opening claim that many, many different parenting styles reflect aspects of God. Nevertheless, I stand behind my conviction that mothers and motherhood were designed by God to put particular aspects of God’s glory on display. As such, I’m sharing with you both the written and audio versions as my gift on this Mother’s Day. The sermon begins 3:35 into the audio file.
Answer me when I call to you, my righteous God.
Give me relief from my distress;
have mercy on me and hear my prayer…
Fill my heart with joy…
In peace I will lie down and sleep,
for you alone, Lord, make me dwell in safety.
How do we read this text when we live in a culture that judges our babies’ “goodness” and their mothers’ competence based on whether or not the babies can fall asleep- and stay asleep- without their mothers’ comfort? I’ll read it, again.
Joan Chittister wrote in Wisdom Distilled from the Daily that “truth is a mosaic of the face of God.” I suspect that most parenting styles reveal some part of God. This has been my experience, my story.
I’ve been a little anxious about parenthood. I’ve desperately tried to “get it right.” As such, I’ve read a lot of books and browsed many an internet site. Before he was born, I knew how to seamlessly integrate Adam into our lives, provide him with just the right amount of stimulation for optimal brain development, and protect his precious little bum with undied, organic cotton diapers.
And then my labor was over 50 hrs and included Pitocin, nubaine, and an epidural. So right after he was born Adam didn’t eat well. And then Adam was a newborn so he didn’t sleep well. So I started reading, again. And asking for advice from seasoned mothers. I found and heard strong warnings urging me NOT to be fooled by my instincts which might lead me to nurse when my baby cried, allow him to fall asleep at the breast, or pick him up when he wanted to be held. They said that such behavior would cause my baby to become dependent on me and overly attached.
One of the baby whispers describes routinely helping a baby fall asleep by rocking, bouncing, cuddling, or nursing as “accidental parenting.” The general consensus is that babies must learn to self-sooth in order to sleep through the night. Of course, self-sooth means not soothed by loving caregivers. A quick search reveals that the vast majority of sleep training advice is some variation on the demand that a child learn to self-sooth by crying himself to sleep, alone in his crib.
Right after the warning not to allow my baby to become dependent on me, I read that it wouldn’t take long for him to master the art of manipulation… through tears. The antidote, naturally, is to become less responsive to his cries, not hold him as often as he’d like, and by no means feed him when he indicates that he’d like to nurse!
I have often encountered these same claims being made on theological grounds. One popular Christian parenting series taught that babies are born with the seeds of selfishness, and that one of the primary goals of parenting an infant is keep these seeds from developing into full-blown self-centeredness by teaching the baby self-control, early on. One of the primary tools used toward this end is having the baby learn patience by submitting to Parent Directed Feedings, instead of the parents taking their cues from the child.
Something didn’t feel quite right about all of this. I understood that teaching Adam self control and patience were important. But I worried about emphasizing this too early. My faith formation classes had convinced me that the primary job of parents during infancy isn’t necessarily to teach self-control but to provide the child with a foundational experience of God.
Similarly, I could see the benefit in breaking a baby’s suck-to-sleep association. There is certainly something healthy and glorious about a child learning to fall asleep on her own. [Update 5/30/18: Since delivering this sermon I have sleep trained two children, mostly with “gentle” methods, but I’ve also let my toddlers cry in their cribs. I feel very differently about an older infant or toddler who is mad about having to go to bed and a baby who is afraid to feel alone.] But I was beginning to reject the claim that it should be our go-to parenting style or that it is it the way of Growing Kids God’s Way because it requires that parents bypass both their and their babies’ instincts, which were hard-wired into them by a brilliant Creator who designed mothers in God’s image to reflect God’s care for God’s children. Any time we intentionally bypass something that God has designed into us, we would be wise to be honest about the potential costs, and be sure we have good reasons for our decisions. The need to care for older children is a very legitimate reason to pick up the pace in sleep training, as is maternal health and obligations that take us away from home. Let’s just be honest in naming these competing realities and considering the potential costs.
I think the reason I was so aware of the value of our instincts is because in the past few years I’ve become a gardener and chicken momma. In those roles, I observed that most all living organisms from legumes that fix nitrogen to my baby chicks- they all naturally craved that which helped them thrive. Babies are born wanting to suck and be held. It didn’t seem wise to me to limit these activities very much. Now, even in God’s creation things doesn’t always work the way they were intended. Seeds don’t always germinate. Eggs don’t always hatch. Babies aren’t always born. Moms can’t always breastfeed. We grieve these losses because we sense that this was not how it was supposed to be. Nevertheless, I question the wisdom of intentionally disregarding our instincts without good reasons for doing so.
And then there was the background of my seminary classes. In several of my faith formation classes we have given special thought to transitions and liminal space. Human beings have always considered darkness and nighttime to be somewhat scary. Just this week I was reading in Luke 1:78-79, “By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us,to give light to those who sit in darkness…” It made me think of Psalm 130:5, “I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope. I wait for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning.” Considering the way humans naturally feel intimidated by nighttime, I suspect that the way babies fall asleep and then experience night wakings may be deeply significant.
In The Developing Christian, Peter Feldmeir summarizes Eric Erikson’s belief that “Infancy is the time when consistency and quality care are registered unconsciously in the infant, producing a sense of security, a sense that the world is good and can be trusted. Simply put: the psychological goal of infancy is to develop trust” (90) Given the intimidation that humans always feel when confronted by night, it seems that the way parents approach sleep may affect the nuances of the way this trust develops.
In Stages of Faith, James Fowler describes this period of faith formation as pre-faith, in which the only spiritual task is simply being reliably cared for. So from the perspective of faith formation, I wonder if our adult faith may actually by impacted by early messages we receive from our parents. Perhaps it matters if the primary messages we receive when feeling needy or vulnerable are, “Night-night, I’ll see you in the morning!” or “Oh Love, I know you aren’t that hungry. It’s not quite time to eat.” Contrast this with hearing “It’s time to sleep. I’ll be here when you wake up” and “Oh, how I love feeding you!” Furthermore, my experience, this last year, is that my own continuing spiritual formation is affected by whether my lips most regularly articulate “Please wait until I finish this” or “Of course I can come back to this later.”
So I knew I wasn’t comfortable with much of the advice I was hearing, but I certainly didn’t have a better model. And then I read the book that changed the course of my parenting: The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding. Its main message was that women could trust themselves and their babies. How often should a baby nurse? However often Mom and Baby want. Where should Baby sleep? In whatever arrangement enables everyone in the family to get the most sleep. When and how should Baby be weaned? Whenever and however Mom and Baby want. So this is the path I chose.
On the way, I’ve been so tempted- probably multiple times a day- to compare myself with other moms who have gained independence and better sleep a few months earlier. Women who our culture sees as being far better mothers than myself. But when I think about the times when I’ve experienced God, this last year, over and over again I end up picturing myself sitting in the corner of Adam’s room, nursing and rocking, nursing and rocking, often in the middle of the night. It has been in those moments, while freely giving my body for the life of another, that I have begun to see some of the distortions I’ve attributed to God all these years. Through an attachment parenting style, I have experienced a different face of God.
While nursing and rocking in that chair, I have finally recognized the distance that I often feel between me and God. It was in that chair that I read Psalm 4 with new eyes:
Answer me when I call to you, my righteous God.
Give me relief from my distress;
have mercy on me and hear my prayer…
Fill my heart with joy…
In peace I will lie down and sleep,
for you alone, Lord, make me dwell in safety.
Can I really expect God to answer my cries if I’m ignoring those of my tiny baby? Wait. Expect God to answer my cries? No, actually, I don’t expect that. I only expect God to answer my legitimate and worthy cries. And God is all-wise, after all, so God knows what’s really best for me. And what’s usually best is that I grow up and learn to self-soothe. Right?
I read of a recent study that took regular samples of babies’ saliva during a week of sleep training. Typically, “Cry it Out” methods are very effective and take only a week or so to train a baby to fall asleep without tears. This is their appeal. Babies may cry for over two hours on the first night, but only an hour on the second, and thirty minutes on the third. This study, though, revealed that even though babies stopped crying, the continued experiencing elevated levels of cortisol in their saliva, indicating that perhaps they were not learning to self-soothe, but rather that their cries would not be answered… Returning to my own relationship with my heavenly father, at some point I stopped expecting God to respond to me. And so I stopped asking much asking of God. Finally I stopped hoping for God. Because I’m just too needy.
Wow. That’s quite a reality to name. I have been blessed beyond measure by the home in which I was raised. Nevertheless, I wonder how even I have been impacted by these cultural assumptions. But then I began wondering if I could be wrong. If maybe I’m not too much. If just as my heart and body naturally respond to Adam’s cries, maybe God’s impulse is to respond to mine, even the cries that are only motivated by my needy, weak emotional desire to be close.
While nursing and rocking in that chair- in the middle of the night- I have reflected on the similarities between Adam and me. He started his life sleeping next to my bed, but between 3 and 4 months he spent increasingly less time beside it and increasingly more time in it. So for about 7 glorious months, every time Adam would wake up in the middle of the night, he was snuggled right up next to momma. That was his favorite spot in the world. About a month ago, I didn’t feel like he was safe in my bed, anymore, so I moved him to the crib. Again- sometimes there are good reasons to bypass our instincts- his safety trumped getting to sleep next to one another forever. Now, I still go across the hall pretty much whenever he calls for me, but he doesn’t sleep nearly as well alone in that crib as he did next to me in bed.
So now when I read Psalm 4, I imagine myself awaking with a start, my whole body tensing with the realization of my vulnerability in the middle of my night. And then I smell God. And I feel God. And I know I’m not alone. And I breathe. My body relaxes. And I can enter back into sleep in peace.
Our Creator designed mothers in God’s image to reflect God’s care for God’s children.
Our culture says only feed for legitimate hunger. But God created nursing to be an analgesic- so the very thing that babies want to do when they get hurt not only comforts them but also reduces their pain! God created only 10% of nursing to be about nutrition, whereas 90% is the laying down of brain synapses… In the early stages of a baby’s life, 100 billion neurons are formed… skin to skin contact- like what baby experiences while nursing- ignites the neurons. And if they are not activated, the neurons are lost forever. If a baby is exposed to something- a virus or bacteria- even if the mother isn’t exposed to it, the baby’s saliva changes. So while nursing, the baby’s altered saliva signals mother to begin producing antinodies to that particular virus. God designed feeding a baby to be about so much more than physical hunger!
Our culture says moms must separate eating and sleeping. But God created nursing to produce hormones in both moms and babies that induce drowsiness.
Our culture says babies should sleep through the night because Mom will be too tired if she has to get up to feed Baby. But God created Moms’ and babies’ bodies so that being physically close actually synchronizes their sleep cycles. So they are both in light periods of sleep at the same time, which means that Baby can nurse without really disrupting Mom’s sleep.
Our culture says moms should nurse on a schedule. But God created a mother’s milk supply to fluctuate with her baby’s growth spurts. Furthermore, she experiences physical pain if she goes longer than normal without nursing. This makes me wonder if God ever aches to nourish me.
Our culture proclaims the dangers of scarcity. But God created both cucumber vines and a mothers’ milk supply to display God’s generosity and abundance. The more you give the more you have.
I trust that Adam’s first year will continue to bear fruit because it has created in me the drive to encourage parents- especially mothers- to reject our culture’s push toward premature independence and instead to glorify God by honoring their instincts and trusting their own understanding of their family’s needs. In so doing, we open ourselves to experiencing a different face of God that I believe motherhood was created to put on display. We will also create a secure foundation of trust upon which our children can someday experience a relationship with God. Finally, we will be a witness to an insecure and needy world. Lately I have been trying to attend La Leche League meetings. I sense that many women there have felt wounded by the god to which they have been introduced. They intuitively sense the awesomeness of how their bodies were designed to work in sync with their babies’. We can celebrate this as a reflection of God’s love, and then our very lives can bear witness to a heavenly parent who naturally responds to our deepest needs.
Trusting the way we were made can be our way of working out our faith as we believe in and incarnate a God of radical hospitality. We can welcome vulnerability. We can give of ourselves. We can trust and reflect a God who comes to us, draws us, comforts us, nourishes us, keeps us, and delights in us. What joy that our lives can bear witness to this God!
We had just finished reading bedtime stories when my son asked, “Can we tell each other just one more story?” Typically I would have said no; we had our routine and this was probably a stall tactic. But I decided to indulge him. I’d just read Jesus’ warning that the beginning of the Great Tribulation would be signaled by “the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel,” and had been reflecting on different times in history when Christians have been deceived into following leaders who have essentially demanded their worship. And so I began, “One day Jerusalem was besieged by the Babylonians, and four teenage boys were captured and led off far from home. Their names were Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego…”
There is so much that I wonder about this story. The Bible describes these four boys as “youths.” All of the sources I’ve read put them between 11-16 years old. How in the world did these teenagers have the discernment and strength to resist the king’s choice food (during their 3 year re-education program), claim that God might reveal Nebuchadnezzar’s dream to Daniel, and then refuse to bow down to the king’s image of gold?
I wonder how they developed the ability to think independently of their peers and those in authority, taking seriously dietary laws and idol worship even as young teenagers living without their family’s guidance. For most of my life I had assumed that they were just maintaining their monotheistic Hebrew identities, but one of the primary reasons that they were in Babylon was because of their own people’s idolatry. When I began telling Adam this story I accidentally identified Shadrach, Meshack, and Abednego by their Babylonian names. Their Hebrew names were Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. This is significant because it suggests their parents’ deep faith in the one true God. All three names ended in either “ah” (which is shorthand for Jehovah) or “el” (one of the names of God). Most scholars believe the boys to have been the children of Jerusalem’s nobility. They would have been born towards the end of King Josiah’s reign, during which all places of idolatrous worship had been destroyed and the temple was cleansed. Nevertheless, the roots of idolatry ran deep. Two years before Daniel and his friends were exiled, the prophet Jeremiah had stood in the temple calling for repentance in order that God might avert the impending disaster (Jeremiah 26). This had been their world. So I wonder what kind of family culture nurtured such incredible tenacity in a climate of compromise.
Another thing that I wonder is whether they’d ever personally witnessed a miracle. The years immediately leading up to their Babylonian captivity were pretty dark ones, spiritually speaking. Yet when their lives were threatened, “Daniel went in to the king and asked for time, so that he might interpret the dream for him. Then Daniel returned to his house and explained the matter to his friends Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. He urged them to plead for mercy from the God of heaven concerning this mystery, so that he and his friends might not be executed with the rest of the wise men of Babylon” (Daniel 2:16-18). And God did it! What in the world made Daniel and his friends think that God might actually save them?! Had they ever seen God do such a thing?
Several years later, their lives were again threatened for their refusal to bow before the king’s golden image. Receiving the contents and interpretation of a dream is one thing, but what from their history allowed them to claim, “our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king” (Daniel 3:17)? Why didn’t they just accept that they were going to be martyred? Had they received a word from the Lord? We know that Daniel had been given the interpretation of dreams, but he wasn’t around and we don’t read anything about his three friends being given similar gifts. Even if they had, what kind of close relationship with God gave them such confidence that they really were hearing from God?
All of these questions lead me to wonder what their previous experiences of God had been and which stories from their history had so strongly shaped their identities and expectations of God. Had they been told about God giving Joseph the meaning of Pharaoh’s dreams? We know that the Passover feast was celebrated after Josiah had the temple cleansed. So had their worldview been formed hearing of God’s great deliverance when their ancestors were slaves in Egypt? Were they so different from my own children who love marching around “Jericho’s wall” (made of either snow or cardboard blocks) and then knocking it down with shouts of triumph? Had they been inspired by Gideon’s (eventual) courage and God’s supernatural deliverance from the Midianites? Did they exercise their young imaginations by fighting Goliath with homemade slingshots? Even while many of their contemporaries worshiped idols had they celebrated God’s victory during the showdown between Elijah and the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel? I wonder if their parents’ faces lit up with hope while sharing Isaiah’s prophesy that “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you” (Isaiah 43:2, emphasis added). I can’t help but imagine them getting chills while articulating that last promise, fully believing its truth yet unable to even imagine how deeply and personally their children would come to know it in the days ahead.
I obviously do not know the answers to these questions, but they inspire me to nurture my children’s hearts and minds to be able to stand under the pressures of an unknown future. Chances are good that I will get to accompany them through their teenage years, unlike the parents of Daniel and his friends. Even so, Eugene Peterson claims that “adolescence is the time when we become ourselves. The experiences and training of childhood are reformulated and individualized into a personal identity. ” (Like Dew Your Youth, page 11). My kids’ job will eventually be to reformulate and individualize their faith, but these years are my opportunity to provide the raw materials. And so sometimes I embrace stall tactics to tell just one more story.
The kids and I have recently been talking about God’s design in making us all so different. It all started one day in the van. Earlier that morning I’d been reading Romans 12:4-8 where Paul taught
For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness (emphasis mine).
So while driving I was still thinking about all of this and decided to take advantage of my captive audience. “Adam, would you like to hear what I read in my devotions, this morning?” I know the day will come when he no longer wants to talk with me as much as what he does now, so I’m trying to embrace this season. “Yeah! What was it?!” he asked. “Well,” I explained, “Paul was comparing the church to a person’s body. Just like a knee is different than a hand, and a hand is different than a foot, he said that God made all of us differently so that by all working together we could give God’s love to the world. Adam, what if your mouth said to your eye, ‘you’re not a very good eye because you can’t chew up food’?” He had to think about this for a few seconds before bursting into a fit of laughter. As if on cue, he exclaimed, “Eyes aren’t supposed to chew up food! Eyes are for seeing!” And so I asked, “Well, what if your nose said to your ear, ‘you’re not a good ear because you can’t smell this delicious pizza’?” “Ears aren’t for smelling!” he laughed. “God made ears for hearing!” We soon moved to things we saw out the windows. “What if a car said to a house, ‘you’re not a very good house because people can’t drive you to the grocery store’?” one of us asked. At one point in our “game” I asked, “Adam, what if Mommy said to Daddy, ‘You’re not a very good daddy because you can’t nurse babies!'” Of course, he just thought was hilarious while I was experiencing God’s conviction at the number of times I’ve criticized my husband’s difficulty in soothing a crying child.
Several days later we were driving when Adam asked me out of the blue, “Hey Mom, what if some grass said to a tree ‘You’re not a very good tree, because people can’t walk on you’?” I chortled in delighted encouragement. We’ve played this game on several occasions since. He, of course, loves the silliness of it all. I love that each time we play my kids are internalizing the biblical truth that we are each God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus in a very specific way to do good works which God has prepared in advance for us to do (Ephesians 2:10).
This truth has brought me such freedom in the last year. On the day of my grandfather’s funeral, I felt that I was coming up very short next to my older sister. She was playing with a group of kids (mine included) while I bemoaned the fact that I could never be so energetic, silly, and fun. But then I thought about all of Adam’s recent questions about death. I think most would have struggled with impatience, whereas I had easily welcomed them. We’ve always laughed that one of my sister’s early memories was how I drove her crazy by asking “why?” In that moment, I understood that we all have the capacity for giving our children incredible gifts, but that these gifts differ between families. My sister’s kids (as well as my own) have benefited from all of her energy, optimism, and playfulness, whereas I can give mine (and hopefully hers!) the space to think, reflect, ask questions, search out answers, and share what’s on their hearts.
However, we are only able to offer these gifts by choosing to exercise them. My pastor once challenged me to spend more time operating in my strengths than trying to improve my weaknesses. Whenever the apostle Paul addressed diversity in the body, he commanded believers to serve one another by faithfully using their individual gifts so that together they would glorify God (see Ephesians 4:7-16 and 1 Corinthians 12). In Your Special Gift Max Lucado describes a village of wooden people who are struggling to complete a project because each is trying to do something for which he or she is not equipped. Finally, they decide to seek the help of the woodcarver, who tells them, “Each of you should do the most what you do the best.” I’m not giving my best when I’m focusing on the areas where I feel most inadequate. My gaze is then inward instead of outward. Not only will I never win the ‘fun aunt award,’ I’m also failing to invest in my nieces and nephews by offering what I do have to give.
So in our home, this has meant that I’ve been prioritizing an after breakfast routine where the kids work on a craft or do something tactile (like play dough or slime) while I drink a cappuccino and read from one of their Bible storybooks. It’s also during this time that we work on guarding our hearts through Scripture memorization. The kids look forward it as an anchor point in our mornings. Then throughout the day I invite them into most of my work around the house. Our family produces a lot of our own food so our kids are intimately involved in both growing and preparing what ends up on our dinner table. They love helping me unload the dishwasher, do laundry, and grocery shop. I love having them involved… But I outsource play. That’s a bit tongue and cheek, but not completely; I’m very happy to encourage friendships and look for babysitters who are especially imaginative and playful!
For some of my friends this has meant establishing a lot of purposeful structure. Others go on adventures most days. Some parents love homeschooling. Other families thrive when the kids are in more traditional school settings. One of my friends is particularly encouraging of her children. Several are natural teachers. One is really good at offering consistency in her discipline. Yet another is known for choosing a pace that allows her to really see people, and in so doing she’s teaching her children to do the same. My family has benefited from each of these women’s influence in my life. What aspects of parenting do you most enjoy? What comes most naturally to you? Doing more of it will be a gift not only to your own children but also to your faith community and to the world.
Comparing myself to others has held me back for so long. It is for this reason, especially, that I get excited about celebrating the unique gifts of my young children. But for now, Adam just thinks we’re being silly.
The single event that has had the greatest impact on our family’s conversations was probably my grandfather’s death. Adam had just turned 3. We live on a small farm and only weeks before had brought home 8 piglets in order to process them in the fall. For this reason we’d begun talking about how when living things die their bodies feed other living things. We had also just hatched out 15 baby chicks, one of which ended up dying. When my son asked if we were going to eat her I explained that no, Daddy had buried her body in the ground. He was rightfully confused by this, so I described how we had covered the chick’s body with soil so that it could give life to the worms and bugs.
Thus, one of his first questions upon hearing of Grandad’s death was “Who is going to eat him? Will it be the worms and the bugs?” Praying for wisdom, I explained that Grandad’s spirit was now alive with Jesus, but that we were going to put his body in a special box called a coffin that would be lowered into the ground, buried, and left there. I then proceeded to share how someday Jesus will return to make all things new. When that happens, he will make Grandad’s body alive, again!*
Outside of this very particular context, I probably wouldn’t have talked with my three year old about death, heaven, and the promised restoration of all things. But I think we were simply walking out Deuteronomy 6:4-9, which instructs parents to talk with their kids about the Lord as they go about their daily lives. Adam continued to ask a lot of questions, especially about the burial. Thankfully, my mom is a retired school counselor so I was able to check in with her when I felt insecure about our responses.
That summer and fall a lot of Adam’s play had to do with death. He would put a stuffed animal into a box and then ask me to attach strings onto the corners so that we could lower it into a “grave.” But we would also pretend that we were seeing Jesus returning on the clouds. He still asks when each of us is going to die. I tell him that most people die when they’re really old, like his great-grandpa. He then asks when he’ll be really old, and I explain that he will likely grow up to become a teenager, and then a young man. He might then get married and become a daddy, and then a grandpa, and then a great grandpa. I often conclude by smiling and widening my eyes, a bit, before saying something like, “and then when it’s time for our bodies to die, our spirits will get to be with Jesus until he returns to make all things new! And then, everyone who loves him will come alive, again, to be with him forever!” My goal is always to hold in tension the need to relieve his anxiety, while also refusing to promise things that could leave him feeling blindsided should tragedy occur. I also want him to internalize the truth that our physical deaths are not the end of our stories.
One of my son’s recurring questions has been how Jesus will get Grandad’s body out of the ground. “Will he dig him up?” Adam wonders. I typically respond by slowing down, widening my eyes, and whispering with a mixture of excitement and wonder, “We don’t know how God’s going to do it; that’s one of the mysteries! We just know that the Bible says God will.”
One deficit of our modern, technological, post-enlightenment culture is that we don’t leave room for much of the mystery that the human spirit intuitively respects. Lately I have been learning to express confidence in God while articulating all that I don’t yet understand. We do ourselves a disservice when we either claim to know more than what we do, or when we believe our lack of understanding is necessarily a problem to be solved. The apostle Paul claimed that “now we see in a mirror dimly, but [someday we shall see] face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Cor. 13:12). I was recently struck by Paul’s outburst at the end of Romans 11: “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” Whereas we tend to see God’s inscrutability as a barrier for faith, Paul indicated that our lack of understanding (coupled with confidence in God’s goodness) could actually inspire faith! All of that is to say that I’m very careful to say “I don’t know” when I don’t know. But I try to communicate delight in these mysteries, as opposed to resignation.
I wanted to write this post not so much to share about my grandpa’s death, as much as to give you context for so many of our recent conversations. If you do know children who are walking through personal grief The Dougy Center, Centering Corporation, and Compassion Books all provide age-appropriate resources for bereaved families. Local Hospice organizations often offer support groups for kids and would know of other local resources. Please do not use this post about worldview to gloss over a young child’s very real experiences of grief and loss!
May God bless you with sensitivity, grace, and wisdom as you experience the brokenness of this world with the little disciples God has entrusted into your care!
* My theology of heaven, Jesus’ return, and the earth’s future has been largely shaped by NT Wright’s Surprised by Hope. I will warn you that it is fairly academic. John Eldridge has recently written a book entitled All Things New that presents a similar theological perspective in an entirely different style. If you are interested in either of these, you may want to read reviews to determine which would be a better fit. I would say Wright is thorough and systematic whereas Eldridge is more emotive and imaginitive (much of the book is quotations from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series and Lewis’ Narnia books).
This week we invited three other families with young children to join us for a very simplified version of a Christian Seder. The evening was designed to engage our kids in the telling of redemption’s Story, so as to situate their own lives in the broader context of that continuing drama. If you aren’t familiar with this tradition, I’ve explained it more fully here.
Thus, eight adults and seven (very young!) children gathered around our dinner table, Thursday evening. One key aspect of a Seder is that the youngest child asks four questions which provide the framework for telling the Story. In keeping with the spirit of this tradition, we had assigned one question to each of our three year olds. So candles lit and table set, we joined other families around the world in detailing how this night is different than all other nights.
“Why do we drink wine and grape juice tonight?” Piper began. “Tonight we drink wine and grape juice,” I explained, “because at the last supper Jesus gave wine to his disciples, promising that someday he’d drink with them, again, at the marriage supper of the lamb! Until then, though, we drink remembering the new covenant—God’s promise of forgiveness—established through Jesus’ blood. And so we drink both in anticipation and in remembrance of him.”
And then came my son, “Why do we eat unleavened bread, tonight?” I’d assigned him this question knowing that we’d have just baked the bread together 2 hours prior. And so I explained what he already knew. “Normally we let our bread spend all day rising before we bake it into a nice, puffy loaf,” I smiled. “But tonight we eat unleavened—or unrisen—bread to remember how when the Israelites were freed from Egypt they had to leave quickly, not even having time for their bread to rise! Yeast has also come to represent sin, so on this night we remember Jesus, the sinless one, who said, ‘I am the bread of Life’ and ‘This is my body, broken for you.’ And so we eat, recalling both the Israelites’ freedom and Jesus’ love.”
Kai was next to ask, “Why are we eating bitter herbs, tonight?” Furrowing my brow I responded, “tonight we remember the bitterness of Pharaoh’s cruel slavery when the Israelites were in Egypt, as well as the bitterness of our bondage to sin.” Here my expression lightened and I tried to smile while explaining that we get to eat the bitter herbs with a sweet apple salad called charoset because God, who works all things together for the good of those who love him, can bring sweetness even out of the most bitter circumstances.
Finally it was Evy’s turn to wonder, “Why are we dipping our herbs twice, tonight?” Again, I tried to communicate yet another tension in our faith. “This salt water reminds us of the Israelites tears, whereas the parsley represents new life. We, too, experience sadness in this broken world, but Jesus promised that just as he was resurrected to new life, someday he will come back and make us new. In this day he will wipe away all of our tears and we will live with him forever!”
After these four questions we enjoyed a hearty meal of lamb, chicken, mashed potatoes, and roasted carrots (provided by all of the women present; when people offer to contribute I generally don’t refuse!). Toward the end of dinner I explained that about 40 years after Jesus died Jerusalem was attacked and the Jewish people were scattered into all different countries where they lived in exile for almost 1900 years. It was only 70 years ago, this spring, that they were finally able to go home. While in these foreign countries, they ended each Passover meal by expressing the hope, “Next year in Jerusalem!” “We, too, are living as foreigners,” I reminded those around my table, “away from our eternal home with Jesus. So let us conclude with our own toast, ‘Next year in the New Jerusalem!’” And with that we toasted and ate dessert.
I felt really good about the night! The entire dinner lasted just over an hour, which was perfect for our little ones. I think the formative value in such a tradition isn’t so much the experience, in and of itself, but feeling included in a larger group and the repetition through the years. If you read my post about the crucifixion, you’ll appreciate that described some elements using language that would most likely go over young children’s heads, while allowing the evening to be meaningful for family members of all ages. I would have loved to incorporate more space for silent reflection, but with so many little ones we moved things along pretty quickly. Please feel free to use anything in this post that you find helpful! I developed my script borrowing from several websites, as well as my own sense of the story. The blog that I relied on most heavily was Ann Voskamp. Her liturgy is stunningly beautiful. I would love to borrow even more of it when our kids get a bit older, but given our context I didn’t feel I could be quite that poetic. But please check hers out!
Last year I had tried to avoid teaching my two year old about the crucifixion, even talking with his Sunday School teachers before Palm Sunday and Easter in order to learn what would be covered in their lessons. My son discovered the illustrations from his children’s Bible on his own.
To quote Daniel Tiger, “I have mixed up feelings” in regards to celebrating Easter with little ones. My questions center around two concerns. First, most toddlers have had few experiences with death. Given their struggle to understand its finality, it seems confusing to introduce the concept using the story of a man who dies only to rise three days later. Second, I am uncomfortable teaching young children about personal sin, guilt, and substitutionary atonement during a developmental phase characterized by a growing awareness of shame and a yet emerging sense of self.
I know that sin has left humanity deeply flawed and in desperate need of salvation. Yet the very first thing the Bible tells us about people is that God described Adam and Eve as “very good.” So I want my children to be deeply rooted in their identity as beloved and created in the image of God before being taught that their personal sinfulness demanded Jesus’ suffering. I have wrestled with shame my entire life. I can’t help but wonder if some of this wasn’t exacerbated by an early understanding that my sin was responsible for putting Jesus on the cross.
So how does our family do Holy Week? Last year we emphasized Easter as being when we celebrate God bringing new life. We wore new clothes, celebrated new buds and flowers, and generally just tried to exude inordinate amounts of energy and joy. This year will be very different. In June my grandfather died. Someday I’ll write a post on that [update 2/18/18: How will Jesus get Grandad’s body out of the ground?], but its relevance to Easter is that death and resurrection have been prominent topics of conversation in our home, these last 9 months. Several days ago I’d mentioned that strawberry season was coming up in June and my three year old asked if June is when Jesus will come back to make all things new!
In Surprised by Hope NT Wright shares the early Church’s understanding that “God was going to do for the whole cosmos what he had done for Jesus at Easter” (93). This has been our emphasis for the past year; someday Jesus is going to come back to make all things new. And when he does, those who loved Jesus (like my grandpa) will come alive again to be with him forever. We have been putting the crucifixion in this context. God created a perfect world; people chose to believe Satan’s lie instead of trusting God, ushering in brokenness, pain, and death; Jesus came to rescue us by trusting God where Adam and Eve failed; the leaders didn’t believe that Jesus was king and so they killed him; God made Jesus alive again; many of Jesus’ friends continue being imprisoned and killed because people still don’t believe that Jesus is king; someday Jesus will return to make all things new.
The Bible story book that we used first to tell the story of Easter was Read Aloud Bible Stories. I loved this one because all it says about the crucifixion is “What a sad day! Bad men didn’t like Jesus. They put him on a cross. And he died.” The rest of the story is about the resurrection. After that we used My First Bible by Good Books. It has since been republished as Lion First Bible. This one is much more involved, but doesn’t yet connect Jesus’ death with the children’s sinfulness. Finally, The Jesus Storybook Bible feels the heaviest of the three we’ve used, but I think it is excellent. It is the first to really mention the crucifixion’s role in God’s plan of redemption, but it is explained in its universal context as opposed to an individualistic one. After tracing sin’s destruction throughout the entire story of the Bible Jones comes to the point of Jesus’ death and explains, “The full force of the storm of God’s fierce anger at sin was coming down. On his own Son. Instead of his people. It was the only way God could destroy sin, and not destroy his children whose hearts were filled with sin” (307).
Of course this is just my opinion and our approach. This year when Adam asks “why” in reference to the particulars of the story (“Why did they put thorns around Jesus’ head? Why did they want him to die?”), I am generally responding with historical and political reasons, rather than theologically interpreted ones (“They were worried that people would start obeying Jesus instead of Caesar,” vs. “Jesus had to take the punishment for our sin.”). Next year will probably be completely different. Just in the last few weeks we’ve started identifying some of his behaviors and attitudes with “sin.” So by next year we may totally feel ready to discuss Jesus’ death in these terms. But for now we’re holding off. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comment section!
This morning we read the biblical story of little David defeating the giant, Goliath. For the last week or two, a lot of my son’s play has centered around Pharaoh’s army being engulfed in the Red Sea. My three year old son is really into fighting. The first several times I noticed this I tried to discourage it, simply explaining that we don’t fight but rather love people. Having recently turned three, he was absolutely captivated by the story of David and Goliath. I do not know how many times I heard, “Send someone over hear to FIGHT ME!” It didn’t take me long to question my approach.
My parenting changed the day my son happily shared that his highlight had been teaming up with his best buddy in Sunday School to shoot the other kids in their class. Having completely shielded him from all violence (outside of his children’s Bible) up until this point, I actually ordered Saint George and the Dragon that afternoon. Now instead of discouraging my son’s interest in fighting, I look for opportunities to celebrate people who use their courage and strength to protect others. Since then we’ve played David and Goliath with play dough. We’ve played David and Goliath using balloons as stones. We’ve played David and Goliath with nothing but our imaginations. You get the picture. Lots of David and Goliath
So back to this morning. We were back to the story of David and Goliath (this time out of The Jesus Storybook Bible ). This particular telling includes the aspect of Goliath’s challenge that if he were to win the Israelites would become the Philistines’ slaves. After reading and discussing a Bible story, we usually end our time by praying. This time I felt stirred to pray specifically for my son. So I got up, placed my hands on those little boy shoulders and prayed that God would continue shaping him into a man after God’s own heart. After we said amen, my three and a half year old asked if he, too, would keep people from becoming slaves. I began my explanation by stumbling around the tragedy of modern-day slavery and oppression before wisely responding, “Hmmm. Give me a minute to think about that.” As soon as I honored my need for quiet, a verse came to mind. “The Bible says that when we choose to disobey God, we become slaves of sin,” I explained. We then talked about how Satan is the great deceiver and his goal is to steal, kill, and destroy. We recalled the serpent’s promise to Adam and Eve in the garden and how Satan tells us us that we’ll be happier if we disobey God, but that it’s a lie only meant to and drag us into slavery and ultimately death. We then returned to the topic of spiritual armor (remember, this kid is really into fighting!) and role played different ways the enemy might try to trick us or those we love and how we can respond with the sword of God’s word that we’ve been hiding in our hearts. It was the coolest few minutes.
I don’t know what God has in store for this kid, but I’ve determined that so long as he continues asking me questions I’ll continue tuning in to the voice of our Shepherd so as to respond to them as faithfully as I can.* What an honor and privilege is mine!
*This is not to say that I must give him information beyond my better judgment. One of my “strategies” has been to respond to what is at the heart of a question, as opposed to what he actually asked. For example, his first question after learning that my grandpa had died was “Who is going to eat him? Will it be the worms and the bugs?” I responded by explaining that we’d put Grandad’s body in a special box to be buried in the ground, but then with Jesus’ glorious promise that when he comes back to make all things new, those who love God will come alive again just like Jesus did. I don’t feel that I was being dishonest about the physical process of decomposition, but felt completely justified in responding to a different question than the one he had asked. I’ve written more about this, here.
