As I have pointed out several times already in this series, my girls are a consistent source of inspiration and encouragement and I don’t believe that is merely a happenstance. I believe it is part of the way God blesses us as parents when we receive the children we do, the way they influence us. Over the years, that has shifted for me. For example when they were younger, there were obvious areas for self-improvement in areas like patience and empathy and grace (and, for what it’s worth, that holds true even today). However, as my girls have entered their teen years, their influence impacts me and the way I see myself a lot more because as they have gotten older, so have I.
For me, that time passage can hit a bit harder because we didn’t choose to have our first girl until I was already 40 and she was born the day before I turned 41. We welcomed her sister just about a month after my 43rd birthday. And while the maternal age was a big deal to my doctors at the time, it’s been the subsequent parenting years where I’ve felt my maternal age more.
Still, our girls keep me young, young at heart and young in mind. And that they don’t see me as “old” as I sometimes do helps me maintain a strong physical health in the way I eat and sleep and exercise. However the areas where they influence me the most these days is in the way they show up in their lives. Their creative pursuits and their joy and even their struggles as teenagers demonstrate a strength and resiliency pretty much daily. Even so, it is their child-like wonder and joy that inspires me consistently.
Take today for example. We had a bit of snow here in Western North Carolina yesterday and it was a given to my teenagers that snow means heading outside just like when they were younger and I had to bundle them into their snow clothes and boots. While I collected glove options and sock choices, I mainly enjoyed their anticipation and laughter as they prepared and then embarked out into the cold, eventually following them outside in order to capture at least a couple of moments on my phone. When I came back inside, I thought about the ways our girls approach life and realized how much I admire them.
They don’t always realize or even see how truly amazing they are and they would likely roll their eyes to hear I see them as still children at heart. Except what they may not understand immediately is what a compliment those words are. Consider children. They embrace joy. They laugh more readily. They are impetuous (and so was my favorite apostle, Peter). They rarely hesitate when they want something. They are stubborn. To me, these are some of the best qualities of childhood; and as parents, when we meet our children where they are and walk with them into each phase of their development, we can hone those best qualities to become some of the best qualities of the teen years.
it is their child-like wonder and joy that inspires me consistently.
We recently completed a book together during our unschooling journey—Your New Playlist by Jon Acuff and his daughters, L.E. and McRae. It’s a book about the ways we speak to ourselves and how replacing critical statements (or broken soundtracks) with better ones edifies us and helps us become better and more capable versions of ourselves. The exercises focused around finding better ways of talking to ourselves and silencing that dreadful inner critic are working to hone those childhood qualities into positive, influential, and inspiring teenage qualities allowing each girl to embrace who they are. That includes helping them understand the ways being a child at heart can benefit us.
Go outside in the snow. Embrace joy. Laugh at a bad pun. Take chances when others won’t. Refuse help sometimes. Ask for help sometimes. Be stubborn enough not to quit. Believe you’re awesome. To me, this is what it means to be childlike and I firmly believe these qualities help us accomplish the things set before us and created specifically for us by our Creator long before we took our first breath. I love that I get to see this in my girls. I love that their adventure into the cold snow day outside reminded me of how much I want to be like my girls. They truly are a blessing.
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