"Don't embarrass me..."

My four-year-old and I were visiting my dad at his office the other day. As we were leaving, he walked down the hall with us and started heading towards the bathroom. In a loud, clear voice, my daughter asked, “You going pee, Grandpa?” There were a few other people standing around and they chuckled. My first instinct was to tell her that we shouldn’t point out other people’s bathroom needs in public, but knowing how sensitive she is to being told she’s made a mistake, I stayed quiet and waited to see how Grandpa would handle it. He smiled at her and remained non-committal, neither confirming nor denying his need! Her question didn’t really get answered, but as we walked away she had a bounce in her step and I knew that her heart was okay. I’m confident that she will soon learn not to publicly announce people’s bathroom needs!

I wonder, though, whether I am as confident that I will be able to un-learn those instincts that would shush her and point out her errors in front of other people. It’s something I struggle with, these feelings of embarrassment that drive me to respond in less than desirable ways. Whether it’s a meltdown in the grocery store, a display of defiance at church, or a poorly timed observation, I too often find myself thinking about what other people are thinking instead of what my children need.

If I’m embarrassed, I’m unlikely to recognize their behaviour for what it is: an unmet need. Honestly, I’m more comfortable thinking of meltdowns and defiance as misbehaviour that needs to be disciplined rather than as needs that need to be met with equal parts nurture and structure. The more we learn about our children, though, the more we are realizing that what we used to think of as misbehaviour is actually an opportunity for us to meet a need and connect with them. The correction will come, but often it needs to wait until the need has been met and my child and I are re-connected. Sometimes their needs are physical – hunger, thirst, exhaustion, sensory overload – and other times their needs are emotional – unexpressed sadness, fear, and frustration. Whatever the case, I will not be able to see past the behaviour to the need if I am blinded by my own embarrassment.

So what is at the root of being embarrassed by our children? What is driving this blinding flood of emotions? Embarrassment is all too often a manifestation of shame, and if we can learn to see it for what it is, then we can take steps to own it and deal with it.

When my children are not behaving as I would like them to and I feel embarrassed, I am actually experiencing shame because I am afraid that other people are judging my worth based on my kids’ behaviour. Since I don’t enjoy feeling worthless, I am tempted to transfer my shame to my children by communicating my embarrassment to them and using shame to motivate them to behave more appropriately. Of course, this is a short-term solution at best. I may achieve better behaviour in the moment (or I may not), but am I really okay knowing that I have contributed to my child’s own feelings of shame?

As an adult, I recognize that I have carried a lot of shame around in the form of insecurity and fear; this is not a burden I want to place on my children. Part of my journey in the last while has been learning to rest securely in the fact that my identity is rooted in God’s great love for me. My abilities as a parent do not determine my worth, nor does the behaviour of my children. As I practice resting in this truth, I find that I am better able to focus on my child in those difficult moments and have become less distracted by my own fear and embarrassment.

One of my desires as a parent is that my children will know deep, deep down in their souls that they are precious and loved. It will be difficult for them to believe this if they think they’re an embarrassment to me. So I must continue to work to identify the ways in which I am motivated by shame, and fight against those tendencies with the truth of my identity as a deeply loved child of God. Then I will be free to teach my children about their true identity, their great worth and preciousness, especially in those moments when it would be easy to teach the very opposite.

(This post originally appeared at Empowered to Connect.)

Living Out the Incarnation

I just read an incredibly beautiful post by Sarah Bessey. All of her stuff is beautiful, but this one is especially gorgeous because it's about the incarnation and that's one of my favourite topics, especially in December! It's a post about not sanitizing the Christmas story, and about being real, and about seeing beauty and redemption and love in the middle of the messiest situations. I loved it!

The only part that didn't resonate with me was the giving birth part. Even though I've processed some stuff related to infertility, it still hurts sometimes. This was one of those times. As much as I loved what I was reading, there was still an ache in my heart as I realized I couldn't identify with this part of the Christmas story. And then I reflected on these words of Sarah's, written to articulate why we avoid the messy humanity of the Nativity:

It’s too much pain, too much waiting, too much humanity, too much God, too much work, too much joy, too much love and far too messy. With far too little control. And sometimes it does not go the way we thought it was supposed to go and then we are also left with questions, with deep sadness, with longing.
 

She was talking about childbirth, but it struck me that this is universal. I'm a part of this. Any human being in relationship with another human being knows this - the pain, the messiness, the joy, the love, and the lack of control. As an adoptive mom, I know this. I have waited, uncertain. I have known pain, confronted with the messiness of our children's histories and the grief and loss that will always be a part of their stories. I have questions. Things have not gone the way we assumed they would.

But this is where the incarnation really starts to take on profound meaning for me: I have the opportunity to live it out. As Jesus chose to enter the world and redeem it in all its messiness, so I can choose to enter in to life with my children, and parent in ways that will bring healing and redemption - recognizing always that only God is the true Healer, and I am but the one He has chosen to do this work, with these children. I am humbled and awed as I realize that I get to be a part of this. As I strive to "be with" those I love - to be fully emotionally present - I am participating in the redemptive work of Christ in the world. As I learn to lay aside my expectations and my preferences, and learn to parent in a way that takes my children's histories into account, I am living out a bit of the incarnation. And as I celebrate this Advent season, I am looking forward to the day when the Great Healer will return. As Sally Lloyd-Jones puts it in The Jesus Storybook Bible, the return of Jesus will "make all the sadness and tears and everything seem like just a shadow that is chased away by the morning sun."

Until then, I will celebrate Emmanuel - God with us - all year long. Laying aside, living it out, and longing for His return.

(http://www.thatartistwoman.org/2008/12/how-to-make-nativity-silhouette-art.html)

Learning from Emmanuel, and "being with"

I was 15 years old, and I desperately wanted to see Robocop. Well, I thought I wanted to see it. I'd been invited by my mom's youngest 2 siblings, who were actually more like my big brother and big sister than uncle and aunt. I think I mostly wanted to hang out with them, and I felt quite flattered that they would include me. To my utter devastation (I was 15, remember), my parents decided that I couldn't go. With the benefit of maturity and hindsight, this was the right decision. That movie would have been way too violent for me. I did not have the benefit of maturity or hindsight back then, so I threw myself a lavish pity party in my bedroom! In the middle of the melodrama, my dad knocked on the door. He had come down to say he was sorry. He hadn't changed his mind - they still thought it was best that I didn't go - but he was sorry that I was taking it so hard. I remember seeing a look in his eyes. A look that said, "I'm hurting because you're hurting." And it kinda took the wind out of my sails. I was still sad, but I wasn't really mad at my parents anymore.

This ability - to see, think and feel from another's perspective - can be difficult to practice as a parent. I often find myself so focused on what my kids should be doing that I neglect to consider why they're doing what they're doing. Picture this: a small for his age 4-year-old boy is scream-crying in a van, doing everything he can to avoid getting into his car seat. He even runs to the back of the van and starts pounding on the rear window with his little fists. His parents try a series of tactics to persuade him into his seat - he resists them all. (If only this was hypothetical!) Before I had kids, I would have raised my eyebrows at this scenario. Wondered why the parents were letting this little hooligan get away with such antics. What I wouldn't have known is that the boy in distress had just said goodbye to his aunt and uncle, and he was quite upset about it. It may have reminded him of how much he was already missing his grandparents.  Maybe he thought he should have given one more hug or blown one more kiss, and the adults hadn't paid enough attention to his needs.

In moments like this, when I'm feeling frustrated and impatient and completely out of ideas, I need to remember what it's like to feel really sad and out of control of my circumstances. I need to dig deep for a little empathy, look at the situation through my child's eyes and ask myself, "If I was him, what would it take to calm me down?" Looking back, I suspect that waiting a few minutes until he was ready to be consoled and acknowledging his sadness and frustration would have helped. Again, hindsight... Why am I always in such a rush? Why do I feel like I have to prove something by insisting on immediate compliance with my wishes? Sigh... If I want my kids to develop empathy for others, I need to model it for them. I need to acknowledge their emotional reality even if I can't give them what they want in that moment. Often, that means slowing down long enough to look in their eyes and let them know that I'm with them. That if they're hurting, I'm hurting. That I don't want to ride rough-shod over their hearts just because I'm on some schedule.

This idea of "being with" is modelled so perfectly by Jesus. I am overwhelmed when I think about God becoming one of us. He came to be with us - to feel what we feel, to see, hear, taste, smell and touch life with us. "He had equal status with God but didn't think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human!" (Philippians 2:6,7 MSG) To follow His example means that I must ever strive to be with; to understand, as deeply as possible, where my kids are coming from. I must learn to put aside my pride and my parental ego and stop clinging to my preferences. It's not all about me.

They say learning isn't so much what's taught, as what's caught. Let's hope my kids catch this one.