There is a little boy, identical to another, who roams my house burning with curiosity, looking for all the hidden places, touching everything he can possibly find that looks interestingly forbidden. Day after day after day it’s the same story, and my tone often says frustrated and annoyed and angry because he’s really, really good at exploring those cloth diapers just folded, when I step away for two seconds, and he’s really, really good at finding those glass containers when I’ve re-folded and hidden safely away, and he’s really, really good at pulling out yesterday’s food from the trash can while I’ve closed myself in the bathroom for a minute.
This day, my boys have forgotten to close the bathroom doors and the baby gate upstairs, but my attention is divided elsewhere, and before I know it, his twin brother is playing with the cars I got out for them and his older brothers are reading books to each other and he is out of sight upstairs, emptying drawers of their clothes and scarves and hats, and my patience stretches just a little too thin. I speak harshly, and he starts to cry, not so much for the words but the look on my face, because I see it in the mirror, how that look says no love lives here.
A little boy, not even 2, hurt by the one he loves most. Where is the love and honor here?
And I know why it happened, because it’s why it always happens: I need to get something done. And every time he pulls out something he shouldn’t, he takes minutes away from my finishing what I needed to do, so what should have taken five minutes has now taken forty-five, and how does a mama love and honor her children when she is focused on her own agenda, that never-ending to-do list?
Maybe she lets go that list and picks up her boy instead.
So this is what I do. I pick up my little boy, who doesn’t get much more than my “Don’t do that” and my “Stay out of this,” and I hold him, let him rest that sandy head on my shoulder, let him pull back to look me in the eye, and while we’re staring at each other, he smiles and says, “Hi.”
Sometimes it takes only a moment, only a stare, only a word from a baby you held when he was only four pounds, eight ounces, to remind a mama what really matters in all the world. It’s not the taxes I’m trying to file or the kitchen I’m trying to prepare for lunch in the moments when the computer thinks too long or even the schedule I must keep to the second so I can get these children down for naps and start on my full-time work.
All that matters is this, a boy and his mama, a boy honored by his mama, a boy loved by his mama.
It matters what I say and how I speak, and it matters whether my attention shows him honor and love. So how do we do it? How do we meet these needs with four other children and a full-time job and a writing career on the side, with all those leftovers like dinner and laundry and home-cleaning?
Maybe we do it moment by moment, choosing the next right thing.
And maybe the next right thing is putting that laundry load in the wash and honoring them with clean clothes, or maybe it’s letting those piles keep piling so we can sit on a couch with a 22-month-old and look in those eyes and really, really see. So they hear the words we don’t speak. I see you. I honor you. I love you.
This is an excerpt from the Family on Purpose series, Episode 2. For more about the Family on Purpose series, visit the project landing page.
