Some days, parenting is filled with the joy of picking my little girl up in my arms (even though she is not so little any more) and twirling her around the kitchen as we are dancing or laughing out loud while trying to swing dance with Taylor as I have to get on my knees to spin him around without getting tangled up. But sometimes, the dark clouds roll in and these little ones have tempers that flare up over one thing or another, and I have to dig deep to try to figure out what they need in the moment.
Here is a small window into one of those storms that rolled in last week (recorded here in this exchange of emails between me and Elizabeth):
On Feb 3, 2014, at 9:55 PM, Emily Huff wrote:
Taylor threw a
fit tonight about something that happened at school today. I feel like we have a little monster in
our house sometimes and it scares me. :(
I know you understand and
that you won't judge me for the fact that I actually just typed that I feel like
my own child is acting like a monster. We can talk more later.
-Emily
On Feb 3, 2014, at 10:05 PM, Elizabeth Hutchinson wrote:
Oh, I am sorry.
Yes i totally
understand and do not judge you one bit. What a great opportunity we get
in this world to tame monsters!? Isn't that what you signed up for?
On Feb 3, 2014, at 10:07 PM, Emily Huff wrote:
thanks for making me smile
(through a few misty eyes too as I am not sure I am cut out for monster
taming....)
On Feb 3, 2014, at 10:15 PM, Elizabeth Hutchinson wrote:
oh yes you are. You
are the best.
Just take a deep breath
and get some sleep.
Hugs to you Emily.
Elizabeth
As I have struggled (recently), I have been asked where I see God in all of this. Most people assume that because my life isn't rosy right now, I should or must feel angry or disappointed or abandoned by God. But, what I feel is so blessed. I have felt Him walk with me through this path, holding me from the very bottom, giving me hope. The analogy I have thought of is my relationship with my daughter Siena. She can be so volatile, so moody and prone to great fits of frustration and anger. While this often frustrates (and often angers) me, it is also in those moments when she is most unable to help herself, or control herself, or find her center, that I feel most the blessing of parenthood. For I get to hold her, discipline her, love on her in the midst of her worst moments. Most people (adult to adult) don't put up with that kind of behavior. But I have the privilege of holding her and saying that I love her even in the midst of all these times and God has entrusted me to help shape who she is. Those are the moments when I feel like my love for her (marked often with some discipline or firmness) has the greatest ability to help her be herself, to find what is truly herself, to hold her through the whirling of emotions. It is fun to be a mom when the kids are happy and Siena is full of hugs and love and we play, but I most cherish those moments when I am her rock, and I hold her from flying off into the cosmos, unfettered and unhappy. And that is how I see God - holding me when I feel like I might come apart, stroking my hair and saying, "shh, it will be okay, just rest and let the moment pass."
From Ann Voskamp (mother of six): “Today, the moment when I am most repelled by a child’s behavior, that is my sign to draw the very closest to that child.” http://www.aholyexperience.com/10-points-of-joyful-parenting-printable/
I
know that when I am most monstrous, I am most in need of love, When my tempers
flare out of bounds it is usually set off by something unimportant which is on
top of a series of events over which I have no control, which have made me
helpless, and thus caused me anguish and frustration. I am not lovable when I am enraged, although it is when I
most need love. One of our
children when he was two or three years old used to rush at me when he had been
naughty, and beat against me, and what he wanted by this monstrous behavior was
an affirmation of love. And I would put my arms around him and hold him very
tight until the dragon was gone and the loving small boy had returned. So God does with me. I strike out at
him in pain and fear and he holds me under the shadow of his wings. Sometimes he appears to me to be so
unreasonable that I think I cannot live with him, but I know that I cannot live
without him. He is my lover,
father, mother, sister, brother, friend, paramour, companion, my love, my all. – Madeleine L’Engle The Irrational
Season
a favorite passage about Eustace from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
“The water was as clear as anything and I thought if I could get in there and bathe it would ease the pain in my leg. but the lion told me I must undress first. Mind you, I don’t know if he said any words out loud or not.
I was just going to say that I couldn’t undress because I hadn’t any clothes on when I suddenly thought that dragons are snaky sort of things and snakes can cast their skins. Oh, of course, thought I, that’s what the lion means. So I started scratching myself and my scales began coming off all over the place. And then I scratched a little deeper and , instead of just scales coming off here and there, my whole skin started peeling off beautifully, like it does after an illness, or as if I was a banana. In a minute or two I just stepped out of it. I could see it lying there beside me, looking rather nasty. It was a most lovely feeling. So I started to go down into the well for my bathe.
But just as I was going to put my feet into the water I looked down and saw that they were all hard and rough and wrinkled and scaly just as they had been before. Oh, that’s all right, said I, it only means I had another smaller suit on underneath the first one, and I’ll have to get out of it too. So I scratched and tore again and this underskin peeled off beautifully and out I stepped and left it lying beside the other one and went down to the well for my bathe.
Well, exactly the same thing happened again. And I thought to myself, oh dear, how ever many skins have I got to take off? For I was longing to bathe my leg. So I scratched away for the third time and got off a third skin, just like the two others, and stepped out of it. But as soon as I looked at myself in the water I knew it had been no good.
Then the lion said – but I don’t know if it spoke – ‘You will have to let me undress you.’ I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.
The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know – if you’ve ever picked the scab of a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away.
Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off – just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt – and there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I was smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me – I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on – and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again.”
-C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
While I am trying to learn to tame the monsters that show up sometimes, I am deeply aware that I am in need of taming too.
I've been encouraged this week to remember the story above of Eustace. While I am helping Anna and Taylor become aware about the scales they have that need Aslan's healing, I am deeply aware of my own scales that need coming off too.
As any other parent feels about their children, I love these two God has given me with every ounce of my being. I want the best for them yet I know I cannot always give that. So, I am praying for wisdom and praying for grace and praying for God to be our anchor in these swirling storms.
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