bewildered by grace

You are three. Dear God, how on earth did you become three? I'm sure every one of these letters will begin this way, with my stunning realization that the reason fourteen million women told me while I'd wander unassumingly through the grocery store, bouncing you on my hip that first year, "enjoy this. They grow so quickly." is because you grow SO quickly. I refuse to be one of those women who say it though. Besides, who would believe me? A woman with her first child will never understand how quickly it happens, and a woman with her second doesn't need to hear it. 

(Wow. It's been so long since I've written that they've changed the layout of Bloggers dashboard and I don't know my way around anymore. When did this happen?)


I've been thinking about parenting lately. I have a smart, smart little girl. One who picks up on everything I'm saying and doing and at some point recently, it's occurred to me in a big way that I am raising this child. I know that seems like an obvious conclusion to come to, and parents will understand more easily what I mean. Let me explain this way: I knew I wanted to have Bella. I don't think it really occurred to me that SHE'D have ME. I've been thinking of intentional parenting, about not being so reactive. I saw a Pinterest sign that said that having a toddler is like having a blender going in your house with the lid off. Some days it's like that, and I rush all over the place wiping up frantically even as the mess occurs. On those days, I say no too often. I become impatient. I long for naptime, or a shift at the credit union. On those days, I feel like the worst of mothers. I put her to bed and want to just lay down and cry. And then it hits me. I didn't just have a child. I became someone's mother. And I suck at it. Poor kid. 


So I've decided I'm going to be better. Do better. I'm going to raise my voice less. Practice taking deep breaths. And read. Being a mom is something I want to be amazing at. Surely there's a book or two that could help. Oh wait. There's four hundred and seventy three million parenting books. "How to get your baby to _______" is a pretty popular title. But that's not my question. I don't want to get her to do something, or not do something...wait. This is a lie. I want her to poop on the potty consistently. But I digress.


It's amazing to me that the vast majority of parenting books I've found are focused on the child's behavior. It starts with sleeping through the night, and goes on from there. I have books on how to disguise vegetables in chocolate and how not to have your daughter become a tramp by age 12. All good stuff. I'd like her to eat veggies. I'd like her to maintain her modesty and dignity. Not many of them answer the question, "how do I be a good mother to my child?" There are some, but again, the answers are so contradictory it's difficult to know where to start.


Someone great gave me amazing parenting advice once, when I was being badgered to read a certain book that I disagree with pretty profoundly. Someone was saying it was the ONLY way to parent and had an amazing success rate. Anyway, I didn't want to offend by saying that I thought it was a load of hooey, even if it did work, but at the same time would rather have spent my fifteen bucks on almost anything else. Like a new novel to read at three in the morning while I nursed on demand (insert sad head shake here). Anyway, this great person (we'll call her Schmecky) told me, "It can be good advice and still be terrible advice for you. Every baby is different, but every mom is different too. You have to parent in a way that's true to who you are. If this amazing trick gets your baby to sleep through the night but you simply don't have the personality type to do it, then it's not good advice. Even if it works." (It should be noted that this is massively paraphrased.) 


I've been thinking about that a lot. Parenting in a way that's true to who God made me to be, while still asking him to file down those rough edges. (Someone get the Man a big file - stat) I've been reading, researching, trying to find something that fits. Some sort of a starting point so I can weed through the literature and find something I'd want to read from start to finish. Enter The Hippie Housewife, and the term Attachment Parenting. I'd never heard it before last week, but it's a lot of things that I've always felt about parenting on a wide variety of topics, that happily fit under a heading. Which is nice and organized for me. And helps with my Google search for good books.


-I don't let Bella cry it out. Not ever. Not even now. I won't do it. If she cries. I come. I'll do it until she moves out. 
-I breastfed for 16 months and LOVED it. On demand. And for a baby on steroids, I can't begin to tell you what that meant for me. Sometimes every twenty minutes for HOURS on end. Days on end. I spent our first Christmas vacation in bed with my top off because there was just no point. She ate. I read the entire Twilight saga, to my discredit.
-I co sleep (GASP!) I get the most comments about this one. I probably will co-sleep until either a:Peter gets better hours, or b:Bella tells me she's over it. And if Peter gets better hours, then I don't know what. Both Bella and I LOVE going to sleep together. And if you're about to argue that she'll never sleep in her own bed and Peter and I will never have sex again, you are wrong. She sleeps in her crib whenever I ask her to with no fuss. We love it. It's not for everyone, and our work situation certainly lends itself to it, but for us? It's the best part of my day.


What makes me happy is that Attachment Parenting is not about raising brats. It's not about children who learn that Mama says yes whenever they ask. Anyone who knows me knows I have some pretty strict boundaries with Bella. Probably too many, simply because she understands far too well. This is about acknowledging that I am the adult. I chose to have you, not the other way around. It's about questioning my motives. WHY do people obsess about sleeping through the night? It's not like I don't get the sleep deprivation thing, I do. (Seriously...Every. Twenty. Minutes.) But this is about asking myself if I am reacting to Bella out of love or selfishness. Do I put her first? God tells us that we should put others above ourselves, that we should serve them with love. He doesn't ask us to be doormats, but to be intentional in the way that we love and serve others. I think others includes my daughter. I teach her to respect me when I say no, because I am part of the foundation of how she will relate to God (oh my goodness) and I want her to be obedient to him. But I don't teach her to respect me because I'm embarrassed that she's defying my authority in the grocery store lineup and the perfect mom behind me is drilling holes into the back of my head with her judge-y eyes. (Oh - she shops at your grocery store too? Small world.) This is about my mindset. It's about where my head is at. It is about living in a way that is intentional, instead of in a way that is purely reactive. I suck at it on a pretty impressive level, if you were wondering. But I'd really, really like to learn. What's more important than this?

If I see a homeless man on the street and give him money, and he spends that money on booze, was I wrong?

Today I saw the video for www.Kony2012.com. It moved me to tears. This isn't an issue I'm hearing about for the first time. I've known about the issue for a long time. This is the first time though, that's I've heard someone with a plan, and that was inspiring to me.

Here's the thing though: Kony2012 has its dark side. Their financials are less than stellar, they're not being run the way I would run it. They're supporting the Ugandan army, and that's not something that I'd want to side with. They're also not the only charity doing something. You can Google it all and find a lot of reasons NOT to support this charity. Those are good reasons, and I wouldn't fault you for it, except for one thing:

Who WILL you support?

My problem with picking apart a charity is that it's often done by people doing nothing to support the cause. I don't know that this is the best way to end this. But it's certainly better than nothing at all. My issue with it is that Kony2012 is going crazy viral. It's more or less, all that's on my Facebook wall. And then someone smart comes along and gives you five good reasons not to support Invisible Children, and guess what? You stop being a human concerned about positive change and you become a consumer. You're purchasing charity. You're supporting something with that money and now you want to agree with EVERYTHING the charity is doing with that money. That is impossible, so the immediate response is then to do nothing at all. Take your money and go to Starbucks (by the way, I disagree with a lot of their charities too).

Compassion International, as a charity, is MUCH  better run than Invisible Children, as noted by Charity Navigator - you can decide for yourself if you agree with how they rank what makes a "good" or "bad" charity. But I haven't heard from Compassion International about this issue, and what their plan is. I have seen nothing but www.Kony2012.com all morning. I don't think I'd send them a monthly cash donation, but I'm more than happy to buy the t-shirt and posters and put them up. I'd be happy to raise awareness.

But then that's an incredibly tricky word: Awareness.  It's tricky because we're selfish. Raising awareness implies that if we are aware, we will act. And that's incorrect for a huge number of people. This will get spammed. People will ignore it. The fact that the video is 30 entire minutes long will lose a huge number of people. That's sad. It's sad that people will change their profile pictures and not write their politicians. But if you change your profile picture, and do nothing else, and one of your friends sees, and they write their politicians, then something's been accomplished. You've created real awareness, the kind that produces change, even with your apathetic trend following. And that's something. It's better than nothing.

It's a strange world. It's a world that can't be charted in a financial statement. Invisible Children gave only slightly more than 30% of their total income (over 8 million) to the actual cause. The rest was salaries, marketing, travel expenses, etc. But if their marketing budget makes our government spend huge money in solving the issue, should that be charted too? How much money has been spent as a direct result of Invisible Children raising "awareness"? That's not charted, it can't be. It's possible that this "shady charity" could end the regime of Kony. They might be better equipped to do it than anyone else, and so they got my  $30 today, and I'll get a bumper sticker and some posters that I'll put up. I'd be happy to let you photocopy them if you like.

Don't run somebody down because they're not doing it how you would do it, or how you think is right. You only earn that right when you're doing something yourself. Don't kid yourself into thinking that you're not supporting causes that you likely disagree with when you make your purchases every day.

If I give a homeless man on the street five dollars, and at the end of the day he spends it on liquor, that is not up to me. I believe that God honors generosity and I do not believe that His arm is so short that He can't use that $5 in a multitude of ways. I also believe that God honors education, and thoughtful giving. Occasionally I give to homeless people on the street, sometimes I don't.

You don't have to support this charity. You should support this cause. If it was my child who was kidnapped, who was being tortured and raped I will tell you one truth: I wouldn't care about the politics of who rescued her. I wouldn't care about their spending habits or their political affiliation. I would care about my baby coming home. Find someone, ANYONE, who is working towards that end, who has a solution you can agree with, and support that. With your time and your money and your letter to your local politician. Get involved. Change the world. But DO NOT do nothing and point fingers at those who are doing it "wrong". Do not diminish their cause and turn people who were doing something, into people who are now so confused about who to side with, that they're now doing nothing. That's a crime too, in my books.