Three

My friend stopped by on her way home from counselling. She just needed a quick refresher on how to parent. So she asked someone. And that someone reminded here of what she knew, and she's gone home remembering what she knows and feeling like probably she'll be able to parent another week. Weeks even, if things go well.

Here is my current mantra on parenting, having noticed parenting seems extra hard for a lot of people I know this spring:

It's all my fault and there's nothing I can do about it.

It's all your fault and there's nothing you can do about it.

Are your kids failing in new and horrifying directions? All your fault. There's nothing you can do about it.
Are your kids sad and depressed, bleak and blue? All your fault. There's nothing you can do about it.
Are your kids unable to find two sock that match most days? All your fault. There's nothing you can do about it.

This, my friends, is the good news. For realz.

We dream them, imagine them, conceive them, birth them, adopt them, bring them home, feed them, teach them, guide them, wreck them. It is really and truly, all our fault. They didn't ask to be born.

And we can't undream them, unbirth them, undo what has been done, for nothing is as final as that which has happened. There's nothing we can do about it.

Probably you're squinting really hard to see the good news.

The good news lies in the weirdness of English language very tense. "There's nothing you can do about it" in this case must mean, "There is nothing you can do about what has been." But at the very same time, it cannot mean, "There's nothing you can do about it moving forward."

And therein is the Life: you can not change them much, it's true. But for all that is our fault and that we can do nothing about, we can still do this: repent. Change direction. Change our own self. That is one thing we can do. Actually, probably the only thing we can do. It's part of what I figured out that time I realized I could only parent for outcomes in me.

So my energy goes to changing me, changing this heart, changing my own outcomes in the hopes that more grace for me, more life for me, more hope for me somehow becomes more grace for them, more life for them, more hope for me.

Because this too is true friends:

Are your kids hilarious and witty? All your fault. There's nothing you can do about it.
Are your kids resilient and kind? All your fault. There's nothing you can do about it.
Are your kids wearing two socks that kind of work together? All your fault. There's nothing you can do about it.

XOX friends. We got this.