Did Your Baby Come With a Flow Chart?

I’ve started a new blog.  This is it.  Welcome.  Sorry it’s not pretty yet or even remotely interesting to look at, but my amazing husband, Greg, is busy making this blog look like the coolest thing you have ever laid eyes on….at least the coolest looking blog that spends most of its time chronicling the perils, pitfalls and phenomenon that is parenting.

Although this soon to be spectacular corner of the internet isn’t quite ready, I have had a post burning deep in my soul for a while now and felt like if I didn’t get it all down soon, it might just disappear forever into the chasm that is my mom brain.

My son, Levi, is now 14 months old and is keeping us on our toes.  He is walking, scratch that, RUNNING everywhere.  He is curious about everything, which means he is constantly exploring places he shouldn’t, discovering items we wish he wouldn’t and in general has made me a very paranoid mom as to how I will ever learn to discipline him and guide him into the kind of child who people want to actually be around.

There are so many resources that give tips on how to best discipline your child. There are books and websites and theories and entire dissertations on how the child brain works and the how to’s of accessing your child’s deepest potential.  Except, that’s just the problem.  There aren’t exactly how to’s.  A friend and I were discussing a few weeks ago how we just need the step by step instruction manual on how to discipline your child.  Kind of like a flow chart, you know.  Start at the top: child throws block at another child.  Follow arrow that points to your possible reactions and then the possible reactions of your child to your action and there you have it, right at the bottom, the desired outcome you are seeking at dealing with the original problem of block throwing.  But no!  No one has actually created the ultimate child-rearing flow chart and it is a serious bummer!

But this got me thinking.  If there was a flow chart or a step by step manual that gave me clear and explicit instructions on how to help Levi become the amazing man God intends him to be, I would be missing out on the journey of helping Levi uncover who the amazing man God intends him to be really is.  I would miss the opportunity to learn why time out doesn’t work for him.  Or why a quick pop to the hand just makes him laugh.  Levi has been uniquely created and even at a year old is so much more complex than I could ever dare to dream and that is something to celebrate!  He is a puzzle just begging me to help him put together and Greg and I and our friends and family have the unbelievable privilege of unlocking who he is together.

Short cuts are for the feint of heart and the unadventurous. The life long journey is for those who truly desire to dig deep into life and discover every inch of it, the rainbows and the tornadoes alike.

And that got me thinking some more…bear with me, I know this is getting long.  How often in my life am I asking God to give me a shortcut in my relationship with Him?  Our small group right now is really struggling through the fact that so many of us feel distant from God.  We miss the epic quality our young faiths seem to have had in recent years.  We miss the feeling of God’s closeness and are frustrated when we can’t seem to find it.  And so, we sometimes want a flow chart.  We want a set of steps that will take us from this feeling of distance to a feeling of extreme intimacy.  But, if we had those steps, and if we had that flow chart, we would miss the journey.  Why are we experiencing this disconnect?  We aren’t the same people we were 5 years ago, so why should our relationship with God be the same?  And why should the ways we experienced Him long ago still be our instant pathway to Him now?

There are no shortcuts.  There is only the long and winding road (insert Beatles song here) that helps shape and guide us into who we were truly meant to be as new creations of Christ.  That’s it. Period.

Thanks for hanging in there…or skimming your way to the good parts.  I hope this blog becomes something I can regularly turn to as an outlet for the thoughts Levi is too small to grasp.  I’ll try my best to update it regularly….you know, when Levi isn’t chucking blocks at other kids.  Seriously, anyone got a cure for that one?  Anyone?  Bueller?