A Tale of Two Families

I think my biggest fear regarding these past few posts is that a mom somewhere will read the words and not be able to hear my heart...

Being a mother is so much more than doing the right things or raising children using a particular formula. It is really about relationship. Relationship first with my Creator, the only One Who totally knows me in every way. Relationship (if we are married) with my husband in a marriage that stands center-stage, and finally relationship with the little ones who have been personally entrusted to my/our care.

What I am about to relay to you is said with utmost respect and honor for my parents, who have raised eight children safely from birth to adulthood. We owe much of who we are to a mom and dad who genuinely love us. I believe it is largely because of mom's prayers and her willingness to press through for us, that we are all living for the Lord and have found a place of healing. We are closer as a family because of what we have experienced together.

I mentioned before that I grew up in a large family: I am the second of eight. I was seventeen when my youngest sister was born. So, while the first four children came along at lightning speed, there were some breaks between the younger siblings.

Because of circumstances in my parent's lives, my memories of childhood are very different from those of my younger brothers and sisters. In some respects we are almost like two separate families.

We were poor in those early years, but us older kids never knew it. Dad mostly worked the farm, Mom was home with us. I was secure in the fact that I was loved and taken care of, even though the sheer number of little ones and the busy Amish lifestyle of gardening, farming, sewing, canning, etc made it next-to-impossible for my mom to "dote" on us. She tells me that after baby number four arrived (I was only two years old at the time) I walked over to my mother, patted her flat belly and said triumphantly in Pennsylvania Dutch, "NOW you have room to hold me again!"

I have warm memories of the smell of fresh, homemade bread from the kitchen, the crackling of wood in the old-fashioned 'warm morning' stove in the corner of the living room, mom's reassuring presence in our house and knowing that dad was out milking the cows and working the land.

In the early 1980's a series of circumstances forced my family to move off the farm. We were thrust into a world that none of us--least of all, my dad-- knew how to navigate. I can not imagine the stark fear he must have felt in the moments when he realized that he was still responsible for his wife and 8 children, and no longer had a predictable way of earning an income. Farming was all he knew. He became overwhelmed, understandably, and simply did not have the emotional capacity to be the person he had been before. Mom went to work, eventually starting her own cleaning business.

So the younger children in my family have a distinctly different view of childhood.

In a previous entry, I described my mom's mothering style as rather loose and laid-back. She let us "hoe our own row", so to speak, in many areas of life. And because she was able to be actively and emotionally involved in the older children's lives, we tended to respond with confidence and self-assuredness; it didn't occur to us that we couldn't do something on our own, even though we may have been young.

Contrast that scenario with the younger children who were up against some of the scariest things a child can face: the loss of security, moving to another home that was sub-standard at best, having to switch schools from a small private one to a big public one, make new friends, and watching their parents struggle through the muddied waters of a marriage under incredible stress.

And they had to look out for themselves in this climate.

The parenting style remained the same or certainly similar with all eight children. But the relationship was no longer strong and secure. A parent in deep pain often has a hard time recognizing the pain in her children. Or, if she does see the pain, she is simply rendered helpless to know how to fix it. In fact, she may even subconsciously look to her children to fix her own pain.

So my point in all this rambling is the reminder that your relationship with your children, and not just a particular style of parenting, must be paramount. I firmly believe in the concepts I have been writing about in these past few blog entries, I really do. But you can't parent this way when you are emotionally disconnected.

And if you find yourself in a place of pain--which we all will experience to some degree at one time or another--my encouragement is to find a trusted mentor or a godly counselor to help you walk through the process of loss. I know this doesn't automatically take care of life's complicated issues, but it is a start.

Don't go it alone.