Parenting Archives - Kristen Anne Glover

Stuck

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My brothers and I used to play freeze tag on balmy summer nights when the fireflies dipped low across the grass and pesky mosquitoes delivered welts to our bare feet.

My older brother was just enough taller and faster to outrun me every time, and he tagged me down by the creek where the shadows of evening crawled into a hallow of trees and went to sleep. It was impossible for my team mates to see me there and even harder for them to sneak past his lanky arms to set me free.

I was stuck, frozen in some awkward mid-run stance while stars slowly blinked awake. The game continued on around me in squeals and shrieks while my feet remained planted in the cool, packed earth of the creekbank.

At first, being stuck wasn’t so bad. My burning lungs caught a breath; my muscles stopped screaming. I could notice the beads of sweat that trickled down my forehead and into my eyeballs.

It was a welcome pause.

But as the dusk melted into darkness, being stuck began to wear. I slung my body over my knees and squatted in the moonlight, wondering if anyone even knew where I was, or if I’d get a chance to play again before Mom called us in.

The longer I waited, the more I wondered if I even wanted to play anymore, if I wanted to run my legs into jelly and my lungs into fire. Trying to outrun boys was hard. Maybe I just wanted to read my Nancy Drew book and call it a night.

Probably no one would miss me anyway, I thought to myself. They hadn’t so far.

And clearly, I wasn’t the fastest runner, and I wasn’t contributing much to the game. In fact, I could see that everyone else was carrying on very well without me.

Stuck

That’s the stuff you think about when you’re stuck by a creek in the dark.

It’s also the stuff you think about when you’re stuck in real-life, when circumstances plow you over and tag you out, and you suddenly find yourself frozen mid-step and unable to move beyond the little space of ground right in front of you.

At first it can seem like a welcome reprieve, a chance for your soul to catch its breath. But after a while, even the rest can be wearisome. You spend your days warming the same spot of earth, head down and wondering about your contribution to life.

That is where I’ve found myself the past few years. Frozen. Tagged out. Stuck.

Within a few months of each other, three of my kids were each diagnosed with separate but significant learning issues. Their unique brains are mazes of strengths and weaknesses, and the older they grew, the more evident their challenges became. Our days were filled with trips to therapy, intense work at home, teaching and re-teaching the same material, and the daily effort of trying to communicate with kids who could not process language easily.

I found myself in a place that did not have room for much more than my husband and kids. I did not have the space to think or create or wonder. I had to step back from every ministry I had previously cared about. I did not have the capacity to invest in other people or even to let other people invest in me.

It was all I could do to manage the few things that mattered most.

At the end of each day, I felt as if God had taken everything I had, and out of my emptiness I had to trust that in the morning, He’d give me enough for another day.

I’d like to say that I did this really well. But I was often fearful and angry. I allowed impatience to fester where trust should have grown, and I made frustration my crutch instead of leaning hard on faith. I wondered then if God would ever allow me to use the gifts He’d given me, all the while failing to see how God was using me right then to do the things only I could do: be a wife to my husband and a mother to my children.

I felt like my feet were cemented to the ground, and every time I’d remind God that I was missing out, He would gently say, “There is no place more important than where you are right now.”

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That’s a hard truth to swallow when you’ve been stuck in the same square of ground for so long, you wonder if you might be growing roots right into it. Maybe this is it for me. Maybe all those things I thought I’d do and everything I thought I’d be were just dreams and nothing more.

Those are the things you think about when you’re stuck, when little lies begin to creep into the slow and quiet.

You see everything that’s going on where you’re not. You notice how everyone else seems to be able to be and do and go while you’re just frozen.

You fail to notice that the little piece of ground you’re manning is holy ground. What felt like a punishment was really a planting, an opportunity to go to the deep places that busy doesn’t allow.

The truth was, I had not missed my calling. I was knee-deep in my calling. The God of the universe did not ordain me to be a writer or a speaker or even a stellar friend.

He made me to be a mother.

And a wife.

And a faithful child of God.

Those things are the irrevocable call of God on my life, the things that do not change whether I am standing in one plot of ground or running the field.

Everything else is an extra.

But those three things? Those things are worth getting stuck over.

Because it is in those moments of sacred stillness that God does the best work. My children are now reading. All of them. I could cry when I see Paul curled up on the couch with a book, voluntarily doing what used to be agonizing to him. Micah’s personality has come alive now that he is no longer afraid to speak in public. Kya is writing stories. Every single one of them has a relationship with their Father-God that is sweeter because life has been a little hard.

As for me, I would not have seen the hand of God unless I had been stuck up against a mountain that had to be moved.

And it has moved. All around me, the ground has shifted, little by little, until I realized one day that I am not stuck anymore. The days are not so hard, and I am not used up at the end of them. I have come to the end of my un-doing, and everything I thought was frozen is now free.

stuck
And to my surprise, I have not missed a thing.

Are you stuck? Do you feel as if your feet are frozen in place, and everything you thought you’d be and everything you thought you’d do are lost in an intense season of being a wife and mother?

Know this: There is a time and purpose for all things, even a time to be still and a little stuck.

But it is not for always.

One day, God will free up your time, your gifts, and even your dreams. And you will find that you did not miss a thing.

When Your Heart is Hard Toward Your Child

hard heart

It was a long season of unrelenting conflicts. Day after day, they beat on me like a hot sun until I felt like I had all but dried up. My heart was baked hard and impenetrable, drawn out from my body like clay from a kiln.

I did not like this child of mine, not really, and any emotional feelings of love I had once known had long cemented into bare obligation. Fissures of anger and frustration ran through me like fault lines; I felt at any moment, I would break.

Of all my children, this one had challenged me the most. We rubbed each other against the grain until static sparked. And I was weary of it. The constant friction had skinned me of any tenderness, compassion, or delight until I had little toleration for even minor infractions or personality differences.

I had become quick to anger, slow to speak praise, resentful, irritable, and everything else that love is not. I had become everything I never thought I’d be as a mother.

There was a deadness in me that was terrifying, ugly, and shameful. I knew it. I felt it, heavy and horrifying within me. I thought about the unspeakable damage I was doing to this child by being overly critical and harsh. Why, God? I cried. Why did you give me this child if I was going to mess it up this bad?

But I had no idea how to change it. Maybe it was already too late. Can a dead heart beat again? Can something so hard become soft once more?

hardened heart

Then one day, everything shattered. It was the same battle we had fought before, on repeat. Only this time, I had nothing left. No margin, no buffer, no grace. What may have been normal childish behavior felt to me like willful disobedience and purposeful provocation.

It felt personal.

When my husband came home from work, I was so upset, I could barely speak, and what I could say was vile. “You have to handle this,” I said, “or I am going to say something I shouldn’t.”

He went to our child’s room and talked in low, patient tones, the kind I didn’t seem to have in my settings anymore. Then, a long while later, he found me. I didn’t want to talk about it, yet somehow, I ended up telling him everything. He listened until my anger slowly distilled into its true form: fear.

I was so afraid.

I was afraid of what I felt in my heart, afraid of who I was becoming, afraid of the trajectory of my relationship with this kid if I could not get a grip on this, and so afraid that I would not be able to fix it.

All that fear came bubbling out. Even shame could not hold it down, even though I wished it could. It is a wretched thing to vomit up all the bile in your soul. But once I started, I couldn’t stop.

“I think one day you’ll be great friends,” my husband said quietly when I was done. “But this is not something you can fix.”

In my frustration and bitterness, I had forgotten that. I didn’t want to ask God for help because I didn’t want him to know I needed it.

That changed the minute I confessed my struggle out loud. There in the bedroom before God and my husband, everything that had been stuffed into the hidden places of my heart was hauled out into the light. It was shocking. Unholy. Disgraceful.

And freeing.

What else could I be afraid of? What guilt could torment me and hold me down? I had already said it all.

A little space opened up in that stone of a heart for life to pulse. For the first time in a long time, I felt the heartbeat of hope. Perhaps it was not too late for God to raise the dead.

There was no Lazarus awakening, no sudden transformation, but only a slow softening, like spring. In fact, I found it hard to pray at first. I was still raw, and it’s hard to pray over the hurting places with any amount of faith that one day, it will be different.

But it only takes a little bit of faith to melt a heart of stone, and God was willing to supply it. The more I softened, the more I could pray, and the more I prayed, the more God rebuilt the relationship I thought was destined to failure.

Slowly, God began to show me the beautiful blessings of having a child so unlike me. The friction that created sparks in our relationship also sharpened us and drew us both closer to Christ. I needed this kid to be exactly the way God created them to be.

What started out as a set of circumstances that hardened my heart turned out to be the single greatest thing God has used in my life to grow it. Big ol' broken heart

Perhaps you have been in a difficult season of parenting, and you feel devoid of any joy toward the child you bore. Your heart is hard, and you wonder if there’s anything that can ever change that.

I’m here to tell you there is hope for you, mama, and grace. It is never too late for God to soften your heart and restore the relationship you have with your child. God will do the work.

What is keeping you from running to him for help? What is holding you back?
Perhaps today is the day to lay down your anger, guilt, and frustration. Perhaps today is the day to let God begin mending your heart.

Failing Grade

“Mom?” I heard my daughter’s voice slide weakly under the bathroom door. “Mom, I got a failing grade on my test.”

Her words quivered in the air.

“Wow, what happened?” I wrapped myself in a towel and opened the door. Rivers were running down her cheeks.

“I don’t know! I thought I understood the book, but then the test had all these questions that were confusing, and I didn’t know what they were asking and…” The words tumbled out with her tears.

We stood in the hallway dripping.

“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s just one test.”

“No, Mom! It wasn’t just one test. It was a really big test!” My conscientious first-born looked at the ground and wrapped her arms tighter to herself. “I don’t know what happened.”

All she could see of herself in that moment was her failure. She saw a kid who had successfully knocked her grade down a full letter in just one shot. She saw someone who hadn’t studied well enough, who didn’t read carefully, and who made the wrong choices when it mattered.

She couldn’t see everything else that she is.

All she could see was her lack.

Failing Grade

I saw my own reflection in her teary eyes. How often I evaluate myself on my failures and measure myself by my shortcomings! All day long, I collect little infractions and big sins. When the darkness sweeps over me at night and I’m left alone with my thoughts, I lay them all out on the table one by one to see just how bad of a wife and mother I really am.

I lost my patience.

I used “that tone” again.

I put off the project my husband asked me to do.

I made my daughter feel bad about her math mistakes.

I spent too much time on my computer.

I didn’t do the Bible reading with the kids.

It all stacks up to a big, fat failing grade. I wonder why I haven’t been able to do better even though I have tried and tried and tried. How could God love this stumbling, tripping child who can’t seem to go through a day without scraping her knees?

But I look at my daughter struggling with her failure, and I long to embrace her and show her who she really is to me.

She is so much more than a grade on a test.

She is my treasure, my beloved child. Nothing she could ever do or not do could make me love her any less or any more. She already has all of me.

Failing Grade

And suddenly, I know just how my heavenly Father feels about me when I fail. He stands in the hallway with me as I bumble on about my collection of infractions, and I know he longs to scoop me up and say, “Tough day, huh kiddo?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you know something?”

“What?”

“You are my treasured possession, the very one I have chosen especially for this.”

I want to argue with God and tell him that he didn’t pick very well, that he should have chosen someone with a little more going on, someone who messes up a lot less, someone who doesn’t need all the grace she takes.

“Look at what I did today,” I manage to mumble.

“I didn’t choose you because of what you could do; I chose you because of what Jesus did.”

I look to the ground and nod. It’s the best thing to do when God is right but you’re not quite ready admit it.

“Can I ask you something?” God says.

“It depends.”

“Do you think there’s anything you can do that will undo Jesus?”

The question stops me cold. I’m sure there must be something. It sure feels like it. But that’s just it: all the guilt and self-reproach is just a feeling, nothing more.

I have absolutely nothing in my arsenal of failures that is more powerful than what Christ has done.

“You can’t undo what Jesus has done—you’re not God. Nothing you can ever do wrong or anything you ever do right will ever erase his sacrifice on your behalf. I planned it that way.”

I smile to myself because it is true, and because it is comforting. None of my shortcomings is strong enough to undo Christ’s sacrifice; in fact, the more I fail, the more profoundly his sacrifice cleanses me, adopts me, and defines me.

I am a mother who fails, but I have Jesus. I am a wife who neglects, but I have Jesus. I am a daughter of God who messes up, but I have Jesus.

When God looks at my failing grade, he doesn’t see less of me. He sees more of Jesus.

And for two dripping kids who can’t seem to do better than a failing grade, that is more than enough.