Fruit of Our Labor

Parenting would be so much easier and less anxiety producing if I knew that what I was doing now was going to produce good fruit years down the road. I feel very lucky that for the most part, I have very little baggage from my upbringing and a wonderful relationship with my parents. I look back on what they did and there is not a whole lot I would want them to do differently, and I would like to think that they would say I turned out ok 😉

There were three things that my parents instilled in us:

1. The Golden Rule: Be kind to everyone and do to others as you would want done to you
2. If you get in trouble they had better hear from us first. As a first born, highly perfectionistic child, this was never really an issue because I avoided getting in trouble like the plague. My biggest fear then (and probably still is today) was disappointing people, so most of my behavior was geared at making sure that never happened.
3. Working hard was a non-negotiable and trust me they would let us know when we were slacking.

My sister and I joke with my parents, saying that we were pretty darn easy kids to raise. But now that I am a mom my head is constantly spinning about the interplay between nature vs nature and how to best influence my sons to be loving, kind, curious individuals while upholding their own unique flare.

Like a lot of things in our society, I believe we often fall trap into black and white thinking. I found this to be true for me in how I think about parenting. The first perspective, I would say, aligns closely with the ideas of Gentle Parenting, and that children are born good so we just need to create an environment that allows their good to flourish. The opposing view is that children are by nature evil or sinful and need to be corrected. I have swung the pendulum to both ends and often find myself confused and anxious because something seems to be missing in both. Until recently… I have started to read the work of Charlotte Mason a British Educator from the late 1800s. Let me tell y’all something, Miss Mason was way ahead of her time! I am blown away at her ability to articulate problems in education that we are still talking about today but also the beautiful picture she paints about children.

One foundational component of her philosophy is that children are born persons and while there might be a sinful nature, children are neither all good or all bad. Children are persons born with the possibility of good or evil and have the ability to choose. This feels like good news to me because I can see my boys as beautifully created in the image of God, but it is my job as their mother to teacher them how to make choices that promote goodness, beauty, and truth. They are not just little sinners that need to be fixed, nor are they perfect angles that will eventually outgrow their selfish desires. They (along with everyone else) are a beautiful mess of good and evil, selfless and selfish.

When I look back at the 3 rules my parents instilled in me, its seems like they had Miss Mason’s idea. They knew our capacity for good and expected us to be good, but they also knew we would fall and wanted us to run to them in those moments. And like all good things in life, it doesn’t come without hard work. As the old saying goes, “The best things in life aren’t free” and that couldn’t be more true than in parenting. My boys are the greatest thing to me, but being a good mother comes at a cost, and it is worth it. Motherhood and Fatherhood is a labor of love and I hope you are encouraged to keep laboring to sow seeds of goodness, beauty, and truth in your children’s life.