My husband and I talked about parenting last night. We've been at it for a little over twenty-eight years. What I never expected was the constant change, constant adjustments that parenting requires of you all your life. As your child(ren) grow and move into different seasons of their life, so your parenting moves into different seasons and has to adapt. If we treated our twenty-eight and twenty-five year old children the same way we treated them when they were five and two and a half, we would be sorry parents indeed (and our kids would be even sorrier!).
The past few years I've learned that now, more than ever before, I don't know what I'm doing as a parent. Fortunately, I no longer have to concern myself with preparing them to be responsible, independent adults. Unfortunately, this is where the problem comes in. I haven't figured out how to adapt to this stage of parenting. In their formative years, I knew what I had to do, my job was clear (although the best way to go about doing it changed with their ages). Now we all live in different cities. We all have lives full of commitments. It's hard to find time to talk on the phone much less actually be together. Sometimes my heart aches to know them as I once did, to have those heart-to-hearts that came up spontaneously because we lived in the same house, for one of them to come into my room to say goodnight and end up laying beside me on the bed and talking to me for another hour.
I find that more than any other relationships in my life, these are the ones in which I now feel most insecure. I don't know how to be the mother of adult married children. I don't know how to be a mother-in-law. I haven't been doing it for even three years yet compared to the twenty plus years prior to that. Other than my husband, these are the most important relationships in my life. I don't want to blow it. I don't want to push them away by demanding more of them than they can give, and I don't want them to think I don't care by not expressing how important they are to me. I don't know how to straddle this fence, and as I've tried, I've struggled with an ugly competitiveness born of jealousy. I've contemplated changing, thinking, "they seem to like this or that, so I'll become this or that." I've dealt with fear: fear of losing their affection, fear that someone in their new life will take my place, fear of letting go of what was in order to grasp what is and what will be.
More than anything, I want my children and their spouses to follow God and to be happy in Him. Whatever that means, I have to trust God with them. I have to trust God with me. And I have to trust God with our relationships. As my favorite quote from Dr. Martin-Lloyd Jones says:
There is only one place of perfect peace . . . you find it when you are submitted in all things to the will of God.
The past few years I've learned that now, more than ever before, I don't know what I'm doing as a parent. Fortunately, I no longer have to concern myself with preparing them to be responsible, independent adults. Unfortunately, this is where the problem comes in. I haven't figured out how to adapt to this stage of parenting. In their formative years, I knew what I had to do, my job was clear (although the best way to go about doing it changed with their ages). Now we all live in different cities. We all have lives full of commitments. It's hard to find time to talk on the phone much less actually be together. Sometimes my heart aches to know them as I once did, to have those heart-to-hearts that came up spontaneously because we lived in the same house, for one of them to come into my room to say goodnight and end up laying beside me on the bed and talking to me for another hour.
I find that more than any other relationships in my life, these are the ones in which I now feel most insecure. I don't know how to be the mother of adult married children. I don't know how to be a mother-in-law. I haven't been doing it for even three years yet compared to the twenty plus years prior to that. Other than my husband, these are the most important relationships in my life. I don't want to blow it. I don't want to push them away by demanding more of them than they can give, and I don't want them to think I don't care by not expressing how important they are to me. I don't know how to straddle this fence, and as I've tried, I've struggled with an ugly competitiveness born of jealousy. I've contemplated changing, thinking, "they seem to like this or that, so I'll become this or that." I've dealt with fear: fear of losing their affection, fear that someone in their new life will take my place, fear of letting go of what was in order to grasp what is and what will be.
More than anything, I want my children and their spouses to follow God and to be happy in Him. Whatever that means, I have to trust God with them. I have to trust God with me. And I have to trust God with our relationships. As my favorite quote from Dr. Martin-Lloyd Jones says:
There is only one place of perfect peace . . . you find it when you are submitted in all things to the will of God.
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