Love always involves sacrifice.
Being a mom or a dad is difficult because the world always tells you, you will be drained, you will be unfulfilled, and that pursuing what you want is antithetical to family life. Life is about sacrifice and making choices, no question. Sometimes however, in surrendering what you want, you find something infinitely richer and better. God works that way. He’s not out to get you, or deny you joy. He’s there to invite you into an infinitely better and bigger life than the one you know. Narnia, true Narnia is waiting.
The trouble is, many of us, after Covid and all the drama and rancor have opted for comfort, because we mistake comfort for safety. The life offered us by God is not a tame one, as any parent of toddlers or teens knows. However, it is good, even with the pains that accompany the bigger world loving others demands.
We’ve pulled into caves, preferring the shadows and images on the cave to the true reality. Shadows lack thorns and can be eliminated in a moment, whereas it’s a dangerous thing to go out your door.
It’s an adventure.
Lewis and Tolkein have been on my mind these days, as my oldest son studies at Oxford and posts pictures from where one graded his papers and the other enjoyed his pipe. Fantasy as a genre, is to expose us to the deeper reality under the veil of a magical one. It is myth making to reveal Truth through the journey. Myth without truth, is a fairy tale, and lacks anything beyond the sparkle, whereas when it gets at how we relate to others, or what we hope, it fits neatly into the heart and never leaves. Dreams and nightmares do not stay with us, but visions and daydreams of aspiration do.
For years, I dreamed of being a writer and became one. However what you learn when you achieve a dream, is that it isn’t an end point -it’s an ongoing reality. As of late, it seems one day I can be a writer, the next a reader, the third a teacher, the fourth a parent, and that one of the many roles ascends while the others fade until it is their turn again. There are other roles clamoring for their turn –which leave me at a loss as to how to meet them all. The image of failing whatever I’m not doing, discourages even what is being accomplished. It leaves me finding myself weighed, measured and found in all things, wanting because there’s no one thing that’s my singular focus.
What if you love all these things? Like I love all ten children?
There’s not one singular focus, there’s all of them, and all of them need all my love and attention, even as each needs my singular devotion. It threatens to overwhelm until I remember, ballance is not the goal of parenting, love is. Love involves sacrifice, and what I must sacrifice is the illusion that I can somehow do this fairly. That I can somehow parse my time, my talent and my day equally, is a lie I must surrender. I must give all, but also be willing to flexible, to meet each of my children where they are.
(Image by Myriams-Fotos from Pixabay).
Like ten fingers, or a decade of the rosary, I love and need them all.
We’re given all these mysteries and all these decades in the rosary because life often is filled with both mysteries and decades that require prayer. That necessary bigger than me essence is true about all the roles I’ve been gifted in this life. Pour it all out and stop worrying about giving equal time my heart tells me –just keep at it, keep writing, keep praying, keep playing and teaching and doing all the things that every day of running a large family requires. God will fill in the cracks of what my husband and I cannot do –that’s the comfort and the reality, the bigger reality of the Narnia that awaits us, beyond the grey havens.
And as a bonus, if I just focus on the today and all it entails, Narnia and the joy of heaven will bleed through this reality with my cooperation, but without my help.
So I promised ten things to help you love your family better. Here they are:
10) Plan dates with your spouse, once a week if possible.
9) Do the worst task first.
8) Invite your children to help make the meals.
7) Set up games and play with your kids.
6) Work together to fix or clean or change something about your home.
5) Read aloud to them from a favorite book.
4) Be silly.
3) Say “I’m sorry.” and “Forgive me.” without conditions or trying to get the last word.
2) Forgive easily, and let matters drop if you can.
1) Pray for each of them every day.
Let us get to the work of loving them well. It will take a lot of time, all the time we have to offer. It will also be worth the adventure and all the discomfort that comes with sacrifice.
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