It’s so easy for me to get frustrated and stressed out by the little difficulties of parenting – tantrums, poop disasters, defiance, pottytraining accidents, having to interrupt my terribly important task of surfing the Internet to do something for them. Sometimes my goal is simply to survive…until Jenny gets home, until naptime, until I can carry my screaming toddler outside the busy restaurant, until their bedtime when I can rest and have an adult conversation with Jenny. The boys and I have lots of fun together, but sometimes parenting is just really, really hard.

Part of the reason it’s so difficult is the tension between wanting them to be happy and wanting to help them become good people. As a father, I love to see my boys happy. Their laughter is one of the most beautiful sounds in the world. Their smiles are sunshine with an on-off switch. But I also have a responsibility to mold them, train them, and inspire them to become the young men God wants them to be – men of honor who accept responsibility, know right from wrong, think for themselves, lead courageously when necessary, and live for things greater than themselves. Molding clay requires effort, pressure, and time, and my boys don’t always enjoy being molded. But I’m too duty-oriented to simply give up and let them do whatever they want. They deserve more from me, even if they can’t see it right now.

Arrows

The sermon tonight was about children. Our pastor has five of them, and his youngest just left for college in August. Despite all the freedom that empty-nesthood provides (money and time and vacations, oh my!), he and his wife cried like babies on the way home. They had prepared their children well and launched them all into the world, like arrows toward a target in his analogy, and their home would never be the same without each of those arrows. Jenny and I have two arrows to launch, Brenden Matthew and Jonathan Andrew. Right now they are merely sticks with the vague shape of an arrow. Each day we try to whittle them a bit. Someday we’ll help add feathers and tips, pull them back, and let them fly.

Tomorrow

Later tonight I read a fantastic article called Notes from a Dragon Mom. If you have some Kleenex handy, I highly recommend it. The author has an eighteen-month-old son who is dying of a rare genetic disorder and probably won’t live past three years old. While she understands “normal” parents’ desires to prepare their children for the future, for her son those aspirations are a waste of precious, precious time. Instead, she simply tries to make his life as comfortable as possible and to love him as well as possible while she still can. (May God give each of us such a person, no matter when our end might come)

Brenden is already over three years old, older than the boy in the article will probably ever be. Jonathan is roughly the boy’s age. Three years is not a long time.

Before I know it, they’ll both be in elementary school, wearing braces, shaving, leaving for college, getting married. Thirteen years from now, Brenden will likely have his driver’s license. Maybe he’ll be driving my old Fit. (Or the minivan, heh heh) Maybe he’ll have a girlfriend. Thirteen years isn’t that long a time, either. Thirteen years ago, I was a sophomore at Baylor living with a sports-nut roommate, working for Camp Fire’s after-school program, and trying to figure out what to do with my life.

It wasn’t that long ago.

A few more blinks, a few more sleeps, and we’ll be looking over college brochures with the boys, only by then maybe colleges won’t even publish brochures anymore because all marketing will be online.

Before I know it, I’ll be the one subtly begging for their attention instead of them begging for mine.

Today

I spend too much time screwing around on the computer and on my phone instead of being present with my children. I spend too much energy worrying about whether they’re going to turn out right. I work too hard trying to survive instead of simply enjoying every minute I have to spend with them, both the fun moments and the difficult ones. I’m too quick to get mad at them for behaving like toddlers instead of mature adults. I spend too much time working on my arrows and not enough time simply appreciating them. And I’m tired of it.

The New York Times author said it perfectly:

Parenting, I’ve come to understand, is about loving my child today. Now. In fact, for any parent, anywhere, that’s all there is.

I don’t know exactly what that looks like, but I want it. One day, one way or another, they’ll fly away. I want to enjoy them and make them happy and love them well while helping them grow into Godly young men, not instead of. I want to be all there instead of partially there. I want to embrace every snot-, poop-, and Ranch dressing-covered moment with them while they’re still here.

Figuratively, of course, because that’s just nasty.