Raising kids is hard. It’s a complicated process that never ends – not even when they’re “grown up” and out of the house. That’s because as we teach our children, we’re also ourselves learning how to teach them. And every lesson taught – and learned – or re-taught and re-learned – is again another new lesson – because the circumstances have changed: you’re older, the child is older, the day’s events are different, and every variable is different. The weather is different, too!
Raising kids is complicated – not just because it is – but because it’s what we call life. Life is complicated. There are new variables every single day. You can’t even perform the same, simple task the same way from one day to the next. Take a less simple task as an example: you learn to walk as a toddler. Then you run. Then you gain speed and mobility. You train. You run further, faster, longer. Then you get older. You lose some of your edge. And sometimes, you lose your ability to run at all. Or even walk. You can’t approach running in the same way from one day to the next because you’re not the same person from one day to the next. Life changes. It’s one of only two constants*.
But here’s the deal: some of the most memorable moments in the last six years of my feeble existence have been spent with my children. Those moments almost always relate to something they’ve done – a laugh, a tumble, a word or sentence, a mess.
These moments make you realize that yeah, as cliche as it sounds, you wouldn’t trade your kids or these hard days for the world. Psalm 127:3. This post has made me start to think about some of those moments in my own life, going as far back as I can remember. I think I’m going to try to compile a list of them and post them here over the next year or so. (It will take a while to remember them, to think through the years, and I don’t want to miss any.)
If you’re wondering what that picture is in this post, it’s my son’s bedroom after he decided to remove all of his books from the bookshelf.