My dad was a high school football coach who probably never
dreamed he’d have a girl. His first child was a boy, and I’m sure he assumed
his second wouldn’t be any different. Although I only got 17 years with him, I
spent those years feeling like he wasn’t quite sure what to make of me. He
pushed me hard at sports, yelled at me like he did the boys, and it only made
me cry. I liked musicals and cheerleading and wearing makeup. I must have
seemed like an alien to him. I know he loved me, but did he ever let go of his
disappointment over who I wasn’t? I’m not so sure.
What I resented as a teenager I now understand as a parent.
Any good parent knows you have to love your kids for who they are. What we hear
much less about is accepting your kids for who they aren’t.
You hold that little baby and can’t help but dream big
dreams for his life. The events in your little girl’s life play out in your
head, and they include all the things that you, her mother, love. New parents are
so busy dreaming that we forget this little person will soon enough be a
separate and unique individual with his own personality and preferences. You
can dress him in cute baseball onesies all you want, but as a kindergartner, he
may enjoy picking daisies in the outfield over fielding grounders, and by the
time he’s in college, he may think the World Series is just a nuisance that
interrupts October’s regular TV programming.
I dreamed of a daughter who would take dance and wear sweet little
dresses. It took me three tries to get one, and she only eked out a year of
dance. I never envisioned myself with daughters who would only wear “boy
shorts,” who couldn’t be persuaded to wear sandals, and who couldn’t care less
about the stains on their shirts and faces. None of my children cares a whit
about their hair or their penmanship, two focal points of my young life. It’s
enough to make me wonder if they’re truly mine.
While my son cares deeply about words and books just like I
do, he doesn’t much care about football. Football was the staple of my
childhood. My dad coached it, my brother played it through college, and I
married a man who lived and breathed it. Yet we produced a son who has to be
bribed to watch a Broncos game. Where did this come from?
It’s even harder when it’s personality instead of just
preferences. I’d like to have inclusive children who make others feel welcome.
Yet week after week I watch my daughter sit by herself at Awana, interacting
with no one, until her one friend arrives. I’m not even sure she knows the
other girls’ names. Warm and welcoming is just not who my little introvert is.
All of my children have amazing strengths—many are strengths
I wish I had myself. I love, ferociously, who each of them is and who they’re
becoming. I love the way they surprise me. I love that a day doesn’t go by
without one of them completely amazing me. I have no problem at all loving my
kids. It’s the part about accepting who they’re not that is taking some time to
figure out.
It’s another piece of the Great Surrendering Project that
God calls us to do. Am I willing to surrender my dreams for this child and
trust that His dreams for her are even better? Can I believe that God can do
even greater things with my child’s life as a [fill in the blank: car
salesman/landscaper/hairdresser/bartender] in Colorado Springs than I could by
pushing him to be a missionary in the Congo? Can I just encourage these little
people—who are rapidly becoming bigger people—to fully become who God intends
for them to be, even if it’s well outside what I ever imagined for them?
Like all of the great parenting challenges I face, I hope to
do this one well. And you can be sure I’ll be cutting my dad some slack while I
navigate this one.
