That sounds like a line from a nursery rhyme. Or an Agatha Christie murder mystery. You can tell a little about my recent reading habits from that, perhaps.
But it’s tricky knowing how to start out because it seems like these days everything has already been said about parenting. There are already thousands and thousands of parents trying to make sense out of the daily life of families by posting their thoughts online. Nothing unique about it at all. But then, the same could be said about parenting. We’re all in the same boat, trying to raise good, loving kids. Trying to be good, faithful parents at the same time.
In this blog, I want to consider parenting as a spiritual practice. Not because parenting is purer or more sacred or less worldly than other activities, but because it is so consistently messy. We get it all and in abundance, too. And you can’t dodge life when you are raising kids. It comes at you in tidal waves. As parents, we are neck deep in human intensity.
I’m not the only mum who thinks this way. Daphne de Marneffe wrote a book called Maternal Desire: On Children, Love and the Inner Life. She puts it this way: “The early years of our children’s lives give us a unique opportunity to embrace living fully, in all its fatigue, moodiness, laughter, inconvenience, pleasure and mess.” Amen, sister. And I want to live in the midst of this opportunity, not let it slip past in a blur of what’s-for-lunch and where-are-the-socks. I want to catch sight, even just in glimpses, of God at work among us as we live through these bewildering days.
I see parenting as an experiment in this kind of practical theology, and I hope that this blog can be a space where we can share our lived experiments. You’ll get to see a bit of my family life, and life with families in my church, and I hope that you will share your stories, too. (You can post your comments at the bottom of this post.) I want us to consider together the strange challenges of being parents at this particular cultural moment and of being counter-cultural enough to be parents in church. Church is a place where it is easy to be a parent, but also where it’s hard. And it is counter-cultural today to raise kids in these intentional intergenerational communities. To participate as a family in something so all involving that isn’t a spectator sport. To focus on God together. To think theologically. To pray.
So I’ll write through all this messiness and grace, and maybe we’ll figure out someway together of being parents who go to church while being people who look to God.
