i remember

If you took a few moments to think back to your own childhood summertime, what is it that you recall? I asked my friends recently (I wrote this in May of 2016!) and received answers similar to my own. 

I remember being outside to feel the dew light upon the blades of grass every single evening. Playing until you couldn't see any more, your friends mere silhouettes against the sky, for the light had faded completely past dusk into night. 

I remember being barefoot at all times unless you had to go to the store, and then you wore 'jellies.' They weren't comfortable and left impressions on your hot, swollen feet but they were pretty and made you feel pretty, too. 

I remember Japanese beetles colliding with my face mid flight as I succumbed to the day and walked home, wondering why beetles from Japan were here in America. 

I remember playing in the dried out and abandoned cornfield behind our house.  The mud would crack into patterns and we pretended it was food.  One time I insisted I had a brownie and my little sister ate it. 

I remember riding my bike up-and-down and up-and-down our gravel road.  No helmets, gloves, or kneepads. Racing to the top of the steep hill at the end, like it was a mountain.  Practicing riding without your hands and trying to pop the biggest wheelie from the potholes.  The feeling of the tires sliding out from under you, slipping on the loose rocks. Sometimes we rode all the way to the gas station and bought some ice cream with coins we found in the couch. 

I remember pretending to be Little House in the Prairie in the woods across the road.  We each had a 'house,' which was a different pine tree. My neighbor and I fought over who got to be Laura instead of Mary.  Climbing the pines as high as we could until the trunks were too thin to bare our weight, pushing up against against that border of sanity you only find in childhood.  Returning to the ground with hands sticky from pine sap. My neighbor had a circular above ground pool and we fought over who got to be Ariel, too. 

I remember catching lightning bugs and filling mason jars to brimming, holes punched in the lid with a nail, losing five for every new one you tried to place in the jar.  Smearing the glowing goo on our arms like war paint.  Going to sleep with the repetitive glow next to your bed, with some grass for good measure. The stink the next morning when most of them were dead. 

I remember endless hours spent on the "Rock Pile" in the fields surrounding my grandparents' house.  Huge boulders formed various 'houses' and we created different worlds there, complete with furniture and 'rock' electronics. 

I remember wading in the creek in the frigid water, chilled from melting snow high up in the mountains.  Smooth rocks under your feet, rough edges worn from eons of water running past.  Finding little pockets of deeper water and pretending to really swim.  Sunburns on my cheeks and tops of my shoulders. 

I spent my summer every year outside and carefree.  Like Lord of the Flies.  Drinking cool aid and eating freezie pops.  I have no memories of my parents even being present.   

The funny thing is, even though this is how I spent my childhood summers and how the majority of my peers spent theirs, this isn't the kind of summer we are providing for our own children. We are funneling them through summer camp after summer camp, forced reading, and endless scheduled sports and activities to fill the hours.  We are not allowing them to experience the blessing of boredom, that unlocks a door to the imagination, creativity, and initiative in our minds that no other key can open.   Whether it be driven from a fear of not giving our kids the competitive edge they need to thrive in this dog-eat-dog world or from a place where we don't know how to merely enjoy each other's company without an agenda, we deny these young souls the gift of this fleeting time in their lives when the burdens of responsibility don't yet lean on their shoulders. 

If you fondly remember your childhood summers, may I ask you why you're giving your own children such a different one?
 

Are we the hard workers showing up in our lives?

In college, there were a handful of well-into-adulthood students in my chemical engineering classes. They stood out like sore thumbs, being a decade or more years older than the rest of us fresh out of high school kids. But as our classes progressed through the curriculum, and class sizes became smaller and smaller as people dropped out of ChemE to presumably change course for their major, these adult students remained. To me, they stood out for their intentionality in being there.

They were never late to class. They sat in the front rows. They asked questions. They waited after class to speak to the professors (which I would NEVER do). They did their homework. They didn’t care about who were the cool kids or whether anyone was paying them attention. When we had to work in groups, they showed up ready to buckle down and gave more than their fair share. And they did all of this with a scarlet letter of sorts plastered to their chests, alerting everyone that they, for whatever reason, didn’t do this as young adults and would never fully ‘fit in’ with their fellow future graduates.

Two stand out in my memory. One was a mustached man I think in his late 30s or early 40s and, goodness, he wanted it. Earnestness and perseverance radiated off of him. He’d been an operator somewhere and had decided to go back to be the engineer. He was just so nice, and humble. I admired him then, but even more so now. The other was a middle aged mom. I was assigned to be in a group with her for various projects on multiple occasions and got to know her a little better. She’d experienced a head injury as a young adult and was not shy about telling you all about it. I always wondered how on earth she’d ended up choosing chemical engineering of all the choices. Perhaps due to the head injury, she didn’t have the natural intellect needed to get through those ChemE courses. She struggled academically. But I don’t know that I saw someone in my four years at NC State who worked harder. She worked so very hard. She put all of her effort into every assignment. She just never quit. All while being an adult-adult with young children. I have thought of her off and on through the years and wondered whatever happened to her after college.

These adult students weren’t there for the “experience” of college like more than half of our ChemE colleagues. They were there to get the formal education needed to grant them the key to success in the outside world. They weren’t there to party. They were there to learn and to learn only. I felt much more kinship with them than most of my peers. It felt glaringly obvious which kids were there because of scholarships both scraped by and hard earned, or were working minimum wage jobs to earn living expenses on top of the academic rigor we were put through, and which kids were there because mommy and daddy were paying for them to do the next thing, just like they’d always known.

The adult students didn’t take it for granted. The adult students valued every moment of face time in the classroom. The adult students didn't squander the opportunity to learn how to think like a chemical engineer, because more than likely, THEY were paying for it. It is human nature to place a different value on something you’ve had to purchase for yourself than something you were given or simply expected to have. I’m hardly the first person to observe this in a college classroom. This is a generally understood phenomenon for college and in life. The kid (or adult) in college on their own buck has a different appreciation for being there than the spoiled kid whose mommy still picks up their laundry and Fridays and returns it on Saturdays and brings snacks and dinner to student study groups.

But I wonder how often we unknowingly play the role of the spoiled rich kid in our own adult lives?

We may have a hard time identifying with the party-crowd kids sitting in the back of the college classroomitorium, but are we approaching our lives and those who surround us in it with that same expectational, self-serving mentality?

In what ways do we take the people and things around us for granted, because perhaps that’s all we know? We’ve spent so long in it that we can no longer objectively view ourselves.

Does the person who has always had a reliable car feel the same gratitude as the person who had to manage life for years without a vehicle they could trust to get them where they needed to go?

Does the person who had children as soon as they desired feel the same gratitude for their ability to have children as the person who struggled with infertility for years?

Does the person who got married at 21 feel the same gratitude for the companionship and iron-sharpening-iron of marriage that someone who had to wait for it until 40 feels?

Does the person who lives in a quiet, peaceful neighborhood feel the same gratitude for their home as the person who just bought a house in the country after enduring night after night with the sounds of the interstate in their backyard and sirens screaming daily down their street?

Does the person who fills their car up with gas every time they stop at the pump feel the same gratitude as the person who spent years creatively planning and restricting their trips around only being able to put $5 or $10 in a time?

We could list an army of these scenarios. These things aren’t givens. But how often do we gloss over their significance because we have come to expect them? It’s entirely possible that someone does feel the weight of gratitude for all of the examples that popped into my mind. But it’s also entirely possible that we’ve mistakenly placed those things in the Expected Bucket of life.

We can so easily identify with the adult students in college, thinking we are the hard workers showing up in our lives. But if we took a step back and really looked, how much more often are we playing the role of the kid expecting life to be smoothed ahead of us? How often are we the college kids complaining about having to do a challenging assignment, rather than seeing it as preparing us to be successful in what is in the days to come? How often are we resentful when our path isn’t smooth? And who ends up on the receiving end of that contempt?

Older women

It had taken a long time to work up the nerve to ask. I’m not one who seeks help willingly. The phrase “fiercely independent” comes to mind. And then, of course, I don’t take advice from just anywhere. I’m seeking wisdom and it takes time to vet out who can provide that. But the last thing I expected once I’d settled my mind on the asking for help was to receive a “no” in response.

I didn’t grow up in church, but a whole lot of my core high school friend group in the 90s did and influenced me greatly. My faith became a real and vital part of my life in college and beyond. Early in our marriage, Shawn and I had served in youth ministry at our church and were able to get to know a handful of amazing students. You could just tell there was something different about these kids — that their faith in Christ wasn’t a show. Their attendance at church events wasn’t for social purposes. They didn’t come because their parents made them. Their knowledge of the truth in Scripture was deep, and thoughtful, and real. They hadn’t been fed the propaganda machine of Fire Insurance from the southern Bible Belt machine. They didn’t view God as a spiritual vending machine. They weren’t under the yoke of legalism or moralism. It wasn’t about checking off the Quiet Time box. Their faith was who they WERE, and not because their parents expected it. They were able to wrestle with the doubts and the contradictions. They were alive in Christ.

Once I had children of my own, I wanted to know how these parents had managed it. I had no model myself to go by. These families had raised children who had attended church all of their lives but despite that had actual, legitimate, authentic faith. I wanted to glean their wisdom on how to navigate these waters. I wanted to know the things they DID do and perhaps the things they purposely chose NOT to do. I wanted my children to depend on Christ with all they are and never wonder if their choice to believe was because they had to because of me.

There was a family I knew as acquaintances who fit this description. Titus 2 had haunted around the corners of my mind for months. In this letter, Paul urges the older women to help and guide the younger women. I felt God was urging me to seek out the presence of an older woman, a mentor, in my life to learn from, who was in the next stage of parenting. My kids were 1 and 2 at the time and frankly, I just wanted to do this parenting thing well. I wanted to avoid things that would harm them that we’d have to UNdo later on. So I set my pride aside and worked up the nerve. I messaged the acquaintance older mom and asked her if she could spend an evening with me, a coffee date, so I could pick her brain for ideas on how to raise my kids to love God truly and not superficially.

She phoned me in response. (As an aside, don’t do that to introverts. Seriously). Her manner was very curt. The message that I received through her word choices and tone were that while this wasn’t something she really wanted to do, she’d begrudgingly do it. Not that it was an honor to help a new and struggling mom. Not that she’d offer the wisdom and hope that she possibly could. Not affirmation for seeking guidance during a trying time. But just that she’d show up and answer any question I specifically had.

But then.

She let me know that evenings were out of the question. Evenings were reserved for her husband, and that was untouchable. She would not relent. She would meet me, but it would have to be in the daytime.

I explained that my children were little. It was all I could do to get through each day to make it to bedtime. My daughter was full fledged in what we now refer to as The Dark Days. Neither of my children napped. (And even these ten years later, I’m still bitter they dropped naps well before anyone else I knew.) I was in full on survival mode. It would not be possible for me to multitask this. I could not be mentally present to speak to her and absorb what she had to say, to even think to ask the questions I may have formed, if I were also having to make sure my children weren’t climbing the outside of the stair railings, putting their fingers in sockets, or eating bug carcasses from the corners. Going to her home and keeping them occupied would have been pointless. I couldn’t have listened to a word she said for the full time job of watching the two firecrackers in the throes of exploration and discovery.

This was the most difficult stage of parenting for me with my particular personality, being ON 24/7 without a break. What I desperately needed was two hours with another adult woman who could mentor me and show me Light and Hope. Living somewhere without family nearby, I didn’t have a daytime babysitter or someone my children would feel comfortable being left with. I had no emergency out. I needed our meeting on an evening when Shawn could keep the kids and I could get out for a bit, and be able to think clearly.

After a bit of back and forth, we hung up. She wasn’t going to budge. Evenings were her husband’s. Every single one of them. From then to eternity. A woman whose children were grown and out of the home, who was a stay at home wife to her husband, who went to church with me, refused to meet with me during the evening hours of one day. She could do the working hours, or not at all. I was in no hurry. I could meet tomorrow or in two months. But the evening was strictly forbidden. So I chose to meet not at all. We never met or talked about the conversation later. And I never asked anyone else for that guidance.

A decade or so has passed since that conversation seared into my memory.

I’ve thought about it so many times. Did I feel so rejected because I was prideful? Was it wrong to just walk away when I couldn’t figure out how to make it work on her terms? Was I being my own version of stubborn and resilient, balking when it couldn’t be done how I wanted it? Should I have made do with what she offered?

I’m still not fully sure. What do I know is that in a time when I felt I was at my weakest, stretched to breaking, and finally cried out for help, I felt met with rejection. The message I received was that “Your needs are not that important.” I’m not willing to bend in order to help out a fellow. I see that you’re struggling, but that’s on you. What you desire is of no consequence to me.

There is an equally toxic mentality that runs through our churches that insists that we must serve to the point of exhaustion, perhaps in places we are not particularly gifted or, perhaps even in places God has not called us to serve. People serve the Church with a capital C so much so that their own families and relationships wither and die. Some people even insert themselves into situations and scenarios without waiting for an invitation, feeling a compulsion that if they don’t, who else will. I wouldn’t want to contribute to someone doing this flip side of the coin either.

Time gives much perspective. Who knows what struggles this woman may have been enduring silently that I was unaware of, in my own suffering. Who knows what perfectly reasonable rationale she may have had for setting forth this hard boundary that she would not cross. Who knows if maybe she just had really poor on-the-phone social skills and had no idea how cold and rejecting she came across. Maybe I didn’t convey just how much I needed someone in that moment. And maybe in the end, this was the thing that was best for both of us. Maybe God protected me from false teaching.

But time and time again, those words of Titus 2 resound in my mind.

"Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good, so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind..."

I’m somewhere in the middle of this now. My children are more than halfway through their time in my care. I’m 41. Halfway (-ish???) through life. I realize now that the things of my youth that seemed so black and white, so definite, so clear couldn’t possibly be more muddy, more gray. I realize now that the more I have learned, the more I have yet to learn. There is often more than one right way to achieve an outcome. But I would exhort to all of you that no matter where you are in your stage of life, to someone, YOU are the older woman (or perhaps man).

I still don’t have the answer to how to raise your children to love God wholeheartedly. What I do know is that whatever I attempt to do through my own efforts, my own strivings, my own will is destined to fall hollow. The more I age, the more I come to the acceptance that whatever happens to anyone else is not for me to manipulate. Each morning it is up to me to choose either to lay down my connivings, my expectations, my weaving things to go my way, allowing the Holy Spirit to do God’s work inside of and through me, whatever that holy work may be, or to succumb to my own machinations. I may fail miserably at this today, but tomorrow I have a new chance to be the conduit of Light for whoever it is that God has placed in my path: my children, a younger woman, or an older woman. The key is not to rely on my own self and my own efforts, but to allow His.

[I actually wrote this Feb 24th, 2020. And something made me wait to share it. After years of this rattling around in my head, I finally put fingers to keyboard and wrote it all out. And then I couldn't post it. I don't know how to explain it. It's very unusual for me to not share something once I get it out of my head and into form. But this time, I thought I'd wait and see how I felt about it a few weeks later. And then the world shut down. And it sure didn't feel right sharing about this when we were faced with so much uncertainty. So I sat on it a bit longer. I'm hoping there's a reason for all of this and perhaps the person who needs to read it, will be the one to read it today.]