What Do They See?

My Computer Guy and I got to go out on a date last night. It doesn’t happen often, but I strong armed him into it. I was on my way home from my first ever Crossfit competition (we took 3rd!) when he texted me:

CG: How did it go?
Me: It was awesome! We pulled a Humvee. We finished third.
CG: I think that means you want to pick up some chocolate on the way home.
Me: I think it means that you want to take me to dinner.

Guess what? I was right. He did want to take me to dinner.

We went out for Mexican food and it was great. Give me a big plate of refried beans and I’m a happy girl. We got to chatting with the owner, and we told him that it was a rare date night for us because we’re usually so busy with the kids. He smiled when we told him that we have seven.

He told us that he is one of eight brothers and that his wife is the seventh of thirteen siblings, but that they have only two children themselves.

“We love our families, but we saw what having big families did to our parents.” He said very matter-of-factly. “We didn’t want to live their lives – worn out, tired, and old before their time. Which is why we decided to only have two. We just didn’t want to live their lives.”

It’s not a new thing for me to hear. There are so many adult children of big families that say the same thing – our families were great but our parents were tired and miserable and I refuse to live that way. I don’t blame them. What person chooses to be miserable? Who would pick that? The sad thing is that it doesn’t have to be that way.

Things have changed a lot in the nearly forty or so years since that gentleman was a boy. Our houses are packed to the roof with gadgets that make the drudgery of motherhood so much easier. Washers and driers, dishwashers, microwave ovens…these things have so lifted the burden from the moms of my generation that we forget how much heavier this load used to be. We have the kind of free time that women used to dream and wish to have. What are we doing with it?

It’s easy to forget that we are ambassadors of our lifestyle to our children. Whether they embrace it will depend have a lot to do with how they see us live it. It’s easy to tell our children that marriage is a vocation and that being open to life is a part of that calling. We tell them that children are the joy of marriage and that they are a blessing and a gift from God. But is that how it looks to them?

Our oldest is a senior in high school and will be headed off to college next fall. I can already hear her judgement on my life in the decisions she makes for her own. She has heard the tales of the poverty her dad and I experienced as poor college students with a baby and has decided that she will not marry until post college once she has a nest egg saved up in the bank. She has no desire to repeat our rice and ramen lifestyle.She has seen firsthand the discord of having parents of two different faiths (he’s Catholic now) and has vowed that she will only marry a Catholic. He can convert while they are engaged, but they will be of one faith by the time they wed. She knows the health issues I battle as a result of having used chemical contraceptives and also of being pregnant nine times in fifteen years. She doesn’t want either one. While she thinks children some day might be nice, I doubt there will be seven at her kitchen table. While time will tell which of these will actually happen, the truth is that she has looked at my life and definitively rejected parts of it. (Some of those parts I’d like to go back and do over, so I’m not exactly faulting her here.)

What is encouraging to me is that she is not rejecting the idea of children or even of a larger-than-2.1 kids- family as so many children of big families do. (Especially the eldest children in my experience.) She looks at our lives and doesn’t see the worn out tired people the man from the restaurant, and even some of our big family relatives, saw. She sees parents who have time to play. She sees parents who still have plans and dreams. She sees those plans and dreams sometimes come true. Which is so important for the kids to see. But most importantly, our children see peace, satisfaction, contentment, and very often joy in our lives. We have worked hard to live lives our children might want to have. We are leading them by example and they are hearing all the words that we don’t say even louder than the ones that we do.

As parents, it’s easy to get caught up in the work of the day and forget that all those little eyes are seeing everything we do. They are learning from us about marriage, about money, about faith, about family. They are watching us and we are making lasting impressions on their minds. So much of their adult lives will be spent making sense of the things they see and know as children that we need to be mindful of what those things are, not in a false and showy way but in an honest and forthright one.

There will come a day when your children look at your life and decide which parts of it they want to emulate and which they want to reject. What kind of example are you setting for them? Are you living a life of joy or a life of drudgery, and how can you make it better? Set a good example for them of how a life lived the way it was intended to be lived can look. Show the joy to them, but find it for yourself. Because no matter what they think about it in the end, this life is God’s gift to you. What are you doing with it?