Where's the Beaten Path?

Everyone knows that parenting is a hard gig. Hard enough that earnest, uber-intentional and emotionally stable adults who wanted to have kids can be at risk of flip flopping into despairing of life and trying to run away. However, we all know that planning and executing an escape route from this parenting challenge is not the answer. It's not the answer! 

When you have a baby, there are so many things to prepare you for the changes that will happen. There are paved paths with things like baby showers and books galore and blog posts dangling enticingly from the trees lining the walkway. You also run into plenty of other sojourners' opinions and even people who don't have kids are eager to give you help along the way. Too kind. (sarcasm alert!) They know you need it. However, as you go along the parenting path, the paving seems to start to fall away after those first few survival-of-the-fittest years and you have to get out that machete and start to chart your own course. 

Suddenly, without realizing, you've whacked wide open into adolescence where no one understands anything anymore and your child whom you've learned for the last decade seems to have sent their brain on a rocket to the moon and replaced it with so many feels neither of you can even keep track. Others along the path, either given your pathetic looks of empathy or shame you into oblivion at your inability to keep up with your almost-grown up kid. It is easy to see why so many parents throw up their hands, say a hail Mary and hope that the first 13 years of parenting were enough to get their now lanky, independent baby-child to healthy adulthood. 

In our family, we have just begun to whack down that adolescence path and have been walking it for a year. My husband dreamed up a plan to press into this season of parenting, to walk hand in hand with our adults-to-be instead of leaving them to find their way on their own. Last year, Trey led Ethan through a year of learning what it means to be a good man--a  crucial complement to the modeling he does every day. They read great literature revealing man's common temptations. They read a lot of the Bible together. They met together regularly to talk about these big ideas as well as how the week at home and at school went beyond just who, when, what, and where. Men in our community rose up and met with our son, sharing their stories and passing on their wisdom which gave our son a fuller picture of what manhood can look like apart from the up close and personal example he has in his father. 

One year later, we are about to add another teenager to this hairy path and this time we are exploring what does it mean to be a good woman in a culture desperately trying to champion women and getting it wrong, or at least incomplete. Her year will look different than her brother's year. Yes, because they are individual humans but also because there really are differences between a man and woman, worth highlighting and nurturing. My tendency as a hopeless overachiever is to leave no thorn in the path, to uproot every weed and smooth the entire way. That is an impossible task. Instead, I'm hoping to train her eyes to so love the canopy and the beauty found along the way that the roots or thorns that might trip or prick her on the path are given fleeting or nonexistent glances. 

I've sent out a preliminary email to gain as much feedback from the women in my life and so many of you have chimed in and enabled me to connect to you in a deeper way. You've also helped to shape what we will focus on in this year and beyond. What a gift to me and to our daughter. I'm going to be charting my way through this year with my oldest daughter, Meira, online here. I can't wait to dive in with her, fill her with truth and the tools that are necessary to live the good life and set a precedent for interacting through this new season in her and consequently, my life. I'd love for you to join our journey together.