It Doesn't Always Get Easier

Victoria and I have written before that parenting the second time around with our new girls is refreshing because it gives us another chance to do things differently, and hopefully better than the first. We made our fair share of mistakes on that initial go around - just ask our older kids. With God's grace maybe, just maybe, we'll be able to improve upon those mistakes with Willow, Poppy and Piper. So in a sense, things are a little easier this time around because we're a little more seasoned. We can focus on the majors knowing that many of the minors just aren't worth fretting over. Likewise, some of the minors that we didn't fret over with our first three (but should have) are now majors with the girls, so it goes both ways. One thing that is definitely more difficult... stamina. We're tired, and there's just no way of dancing around that.

But one thing that ironically doesn't get any easier is parenting your children as they grow older. Just when most think that it's time to coast, it's actually time to kick it into high gear. When they're young you can fix most of their problems. You know, skinned knees and boo boo's, fights with siblings, disappointment over nap times, disdain over certain foods, etc... For them, those problems are like the weight of the world crushing down upon them. For us, we can see them for what they are - fixable (most of the time). But for our older kids, their problems are beginning to look a lot like ours. You know, the ones we can't fix and the same ones we've struggled with for a whole lifetime now. And those are the kind of problems that don't always have answers. They're complicated and often unsolvable. You wish, as a parent, you could swoop down and just kiss it to make it all better. But we all know it doesn't work that way.

And this is when our parenting in taking problems away shifts to parenting in helping them take their problems to the chief problem solver. This is the time where our children's faith becomes theirs, and they realize that we (as parents) are fallible at best, that we don't have all of the answers, and that even we, Mom and Dad, can disappoint them with our lack of wisdom and inability to overcome. So we point them to Jesus and show them that He's more than sufficient. That's the only answer we have, and it just so happens to be the best answer of all. We know it sounds simplistic, and for the sake of this blog we are oversimplifying it, but the bottom line is that we're not their god, and that all of the parenting we did up until now was meant to point them to the true God so that when we could no longer be their physician of life, they could grab a hold of the only physician of life.

"So, Austin, Annie and Barret (and Meagan, you're in there too), we come along side you and ache when you ache, asking you to press into the only Father that can give you what you really need. We're always here to help you see Him. We now need you to help us see Him too."