Parenting 101

I just survived a week of four sick children. Caring for four children with a stomach virus is by no means fun. They fell ill like dominoes: one after the other, in the middle of the night. The routine of changing beds, changing clothes, ferrying buckets, cups of ginger ale and cold washcloths seemed endless. And each child has a different temperament and different levels of emotional need when sick: one needs a permanent post on a lap, the other to be left (mostly) alone, etc.

While care-taking was exhausting, tedious and downright gross, it was one of my better moments of parenting. I had no problems with my children’s individual needs. I could accept their limitations and encourage them to do the things that would make them better. Most of all, I could be with them: close when they needed me and a “Mom!” away when they called. For those hours, I did not once feel the stir of impatience or the hopeless frustration that often accompanies my parenting.

I rejoice in those moments, few as they are, because they give me hope. Parenting has been the greatest challenge I have faced to date. My expectations and the reality in which I live never seem to match up. The difficulties are many. Beginning with the genetic code inherited by my kids which is rife with characteristics that I wish I could erase and including my constant feelings of incompetence, I often feel that I'm struggling just to keep up.

Add to this, my endless list of questions: how to not inflict my fears or limitations on my children; how to provide enough safety and security without stifling their spirit adventure; how to appreciate each child’s unique gifts and personality; how to know when to say yes and when to say no; how to love without strings; how let go when all I want to do is hold on. I often ask myself what hormone-induced insanity made me think I could be a parent.

I remember when I rebelled at the notion of God as a divine parent. I especially rebelled at the “Father” label, steeped as it was in patriarchy and the fallacy of “Father Knows Best.” “God the Father” has always seemed like a convenient justification for misogyny and oppression. My foray into parenting has steadily challenged those notions.

Lately, I have run scrambling to prayer and to Scriptural for help. My search has opened my eyes to many images of God’s parenting. Particularly striking to me are the images of God as a bird sheltering babies beneath warm wings and those passages that speak of God gathering lost, injured children.

I have come to better appreciate God’s parenting skills. Our Creator appreciates each of us as unique and beautiful creatures. God recognizes that each child has different needs. God appreciates the D- kids as much as the A+ kids. God doesn’t value the special needs kids any less than the able ones. God is willing to let adult children make stupid choices and love them anyway. God not afraid to be with us in the disgusting mess we make of our lives. And God is never further than a “Mom!” away.

And, during the past week, as I kneeled by my husband scrubbing the "retch-edness" off the floor and watched him coddle sick kids even as he himself started to succumb to the germ, I realized again that many of our notions of “fatherhood” have been more fantasy than reality. Fatherhood is not about distant, domineering relationship. “Daddy!” is yelled in the middle of the night as frequently as “Mom!” in our house. And the response is the same: a mad dash to the side of a frightened child.

If God is eternal (and I believe that is the case), God’s parenting must encompass that of both mother and father. God’s parenting is the best of those concepts, minus the baggage of human failure and genetic flaw. God’s parenting is not defined by patriarchy or oppression. God’s parenting is love: pure, simple and perfect. Even if mine isn’t.