Moments with Kathryn Blog

Last week I had the privilege of having coffee with a woman in my church who reached out to me so she could ask my advice on parenting.

Nice.

Unusual. But nice.

As a full-time working mom of an only child, let's just say that the moms who have asked for my advice have been few and far between.

As I sat down with my new friend I found myself praying for insight as to how I could be helpful. My context for parenting is so very different from hers. I have one adult child who I gave birth to. She has a mix of ages and also has fostered, adopted as well as had her own kids. What could I offer?

She came to me for advice for one simple reason. My daughter Jenna. She has had conversations with Jenna and wanted to know how I and my husband managed to raise a child who speaks so highly of her parents.

We are pretty blessed. Our daughter adores me and her dad, and she not only tells us, she tells anyone who asks and some who don’t. It is humbling and amazing to us and we don't take it for granted. Our relationship is a source of great joy in my life, and Michael and I are incredibly grateful.

But how did we do it?

What was the secret?

I rarely know how to answer this question on any topic where I’ve found what others perceive as “success”. I am quick to think of all the things I don’t think I got right but not so easily of what went well, let alone anything I did with intention and not on accident!

Before offering any input or advice I listened to her abbreviated life story to understand her context. Then I shared my hyper-abbreviated life story to give her a bit of my own context.

With that exchange in place she asked again. “What did you do that made Jenna not only love you, but admire you?”

I took a deep breath. And with some slight trepidation I shared four thoughts that I prayed would transcend the differences in our contexts and still be helpful.

Knowing that parenting advice can get people in trouble I offer it here with the same trepidation.

Parenting Advice 1: Keep your marriage first

Before Jenna came along, Michael and I had a mindset that we were already a family. Having a child, or children, would grow our family, but we were a family before we procreated.

We were counseled by some wise friends to make sure we kept our marriage as the primary relationship in the family.

This thinking was counter-intuitive to a lot of culture. Many moms believe that their “primary calling” is to be a mom, so once kids come along, they become the sole focus of her energy. Sometimes, whether intentionally or not, the marriage begins to take a back seat and it becomes all about the children.

I’m sure I’ll get pushback and step on some toes here, but I firmly believe when you get married, your relationship to your spouse is your most important human relationship. This doesn’t change when kids come along. They are an incredible gift. They stretch and grow you in ways beyond imagining, and they consume a ton of time and energy, but your relationship with your kids should not become more important than your relationship with your spouse.

I also believe that keeping your marriage the primary relationship lays a foundation of safety and stability for your children. If they know mom and dad love each other and are on the same team their home feels more secure.

Parenting Advice Part 2: Create peace in your home

Michael and I don’t fight much. We never have. We get irritated with each other sometimes. We disagree. We have tension. Heck for 17 of Jenna’s 23 years, we have owned Half a Bubble Out and worked together full time. There’s bound to be conflict.

But we don’t yell at each other. We both learned even before we got married, to choose our “fighting words” carefully. While we fail at times, we work hard to not be mean, to not say hurtful things we know would trigger the other.

We also didn’t yell at Jenna. She got in trouble plenty of times, just ask her. But we didn’t scream at her. We tried to avoid saying “you always” or “you never” and when we were really angry we sent her to her room so we could cool off and regroup. Very helpful for both sides.

Having an only child definitely makes having a peaceful home easier. With siblings come arguments and we didn’t have that. We know. Jenna knows. But even so the reality was that Jenna knew that home was a place of peace. A place she could retreat to where she would be safe. A place she could bring her friends and know they would be welcomed and loved. She knew.

Parenting Advice Part 3: Model Jesus for your kids

This has been an interesting area for me to unpack over the years. Did we do things right? Did we fail miserably? We didn’t have family devotionals or disciplined times of talking about our faith. We took Jenna to church every week. We prayed at meals and at bedtime always, and occasionally read Bible stories. But honestly, considering I have a Masters in New Testament Theology and Michael and I had been in full time ministry for several years and still preach regularly, it felt a bit weak. I often wish we had done better. I wouldn’t mind a re-do.

But what we did do was have conversation. Regular conversation that involved our faith journey because our faith journey is our life. Every decision, all of our challenges of running a business and wondering if we were going to survive in the early days, all of the moments of joy and pain along the path of life. All of them involved walking and talking about faith. Michael and I routinely find ourselves in deep conversations about scripture, or about a sermon. We debate and banter about a lot of faith topics and Jenna often had to “put up with it” during her growing up years trapped in the back seat of the car.

Now more often than not she engages and throws in her two cents, but that didn’t really start till college. Before that she just absorbed, sometimes reluctantly.

We also do our best to walk it out. We are committed to the process and when we blow it, we say we are sorry. To each other, and to Jenna. We ask forgiveness. She has been a witness of that for her whole life.

They say that more is caught than taught, and we are a testimony to that.

Parenting Advice 4: Pray Hard

I am keenly aware that no matter what we do with intention and what we don't do, parenting can sometimes be a bit of a crap shoot. I've known too many families where parents did a great job and kids went off the rails. While no parent is perfect, some of the choices kids make have little or nothing to do with what we did right or wrong. Kids have free will, and at the end of the day we don't actually have control. So we can offer each other all the advice in the world, and how we parent matters because we have a responsibility to love well, but there are no guarantees.

And so we pray. Through every choice they make. Through the ups and downs. Through the tears and laughter. We pray. We pray hard. Life is unpredictable and parenting is a marathon not a sprint. The older they get the more painfully aware we become of how little control we have. What we can do is pray for them and remember that they have a heavenly Father who is much wiser than we are and somehow has them in the palm of His hand all day, every day.

So my advice is simple. Keep your marriage first. Create peace in your home. Model Jesus for your kids. Pray hard.

Those are my "words of wisdom" for parenting this Mother's Day.

And just in case it isn't clear:

I celebrate moms who have just one child, and moms who have multiple kids.

I celebrate moms who stay at home and moms who work.

I celebrate moms who have birthed their children, and moms who have adopted or fostered.

I have no idea how to manage any challenge that comes from multiple kids and I applaud all of you who are balancing out the "average child per family stats on my behalf." Thank you for your contribution.

For  all of you, I pray a blessing over your relationship with your kids.

Happy Mother’s Day. In the words of Proverbs 31:28, may your children arise and call you blessed!