“Dane and Drake”
Ever since my mom asked me to join the blog team, I’ve been struggling with where I will fit in. I’ve felt woefully unqualified to give anyone advice about how to teach their children. And honestly, I wanted to say no. But how do you say no to your mom? My sister and sister-in-law (whose posts you’ve likely read) are amazing moms in the thick of parenting young ones, so mature, so loving and patient, and confident and skilled and steadfast in their faith and beliefs.
My parenting journey, on the other hand, started at the tail end of my time as the difficult child, the rebellious one. At a time before social media and the vast resources available on the internet today. I didn’t know what I believed or how I would raise my future children, but I was young and had some time to figure those things out… or so I thought.
Just when my husband and I had decided to wait five years to start having kids, I found out I was pregnant. We were 21 and had just celebrated our second wedding anniversary.
We were living in Alaska, thousands of miles away from family and friends. And hundreds of miles from the nearest church congregation. Our baby boy was born in September, going into the cold, dark winter in Fairbanks. He was colicky and a terrible sleeper. My husband was a firefighter working 24-hours on, 24-hours off. Postpartum depression—that my doctor dismissed because I wasn’t suicidal—had transitioned into a general depression. And just as we finally felt like we were getting the hang of our once-colicky, headstrong, energetic firstborn, I found out I was pregnant again (on his first birthday). To say we were thrown into the deep end of parenting is an understatement.
After our second, I decided to take more control of my life. As soon as I hit my 6-weeks post c-section, I started going to Curves. If you’ve never heard of it, it’s a workout center that’s great for women who don’t feel comfortable in a traditional gym. It’s set up in a circuit style and you weigh in and they take your measurements and they celebrate women when they’ve lost weight and/or inches. I was losing weight and inches and feeling great and more confident. And on top of that, we finally had a great group of friends who also had families. I was finally feeling settled. And then a few months later when our youngest was a few months old and our oldest was two, my husband got a job in Washington State. It was a huge move. It was still across the country from home in Ohio, but compared to Alaska, we were half way home.
And there was a church congregation there, minutes from where we lived.
I started attending church regularly for the first time in at least three years. We had a small, tight knit congregation who welcomed us with open arms. My husband’s schedule at this new fire department was three days on (Friday—Sunday) and then four days off (Monday—Thursday), so I was going to church on my own each week with a two-year old and a five-month old. Church fell right in the middle of my husband’s 72-hour shift, when things were getting long, tiring, and stressful, but church revived me every week. I was surrounded by loving, supportive people who will forever hold a special place in my heart, and I knew that God was drawing me back to Him.
Within seven months of moving there, I was baptized. Though I had grown up in the church, I still felt like a newbie in a lot of ways. I felt like I had gotten a late start at teaching my kids—although at only 2 1/2 and just under a year, it really wasn’t that late. But I felt like I was playing catch-up, always a step behind the other mothers I talked to. Always feeling inadequate, feeling sorry for my children that they got “stuck” with me, instead of someone who had it all together. And honestly, I have still felt this way through the years, even as my kids became teenagers.
But now. Now as my kids are 17 and almost 16 and we’re 9 months into the most difficult trial we’ve faced, God has finally helped me understand that He has put me here for a purpose. He knew my children before I did, He chose when they would be born and who their parents would be. And that includes me. In all my imperfection and weakness, He chose me to be their mother. And I can rest comfortably in the knowledge that me being my children’s mother was according to His plan, my weakness and all, because, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9).
So, to those of you who may be feeling inadequate, ill-equipped to live up to the great examples you see around you: God called you to this task. He chose you, as His child and as a parent to your children. We can’t be perfect, but we can rest assured that God believes in us, and that He will give us the strength and ability to be the best parent we can be. And thankfully, God loves our children more than we can imagine and we can be “confident… that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil 1:6), not only in us, but our children too.