This is the baby of our family
It divided our life into before and after.
For the most part, I’ve accepted what happened to us. Life is hard, and tragedy strikes indiscriminately. As a wise man once said, “People ask ‘Why me?’ But I always think, ‘Why not me?’” (The wise man is my dad.)
Relationships give life meaning. The relationships we build with our children can enrich us in ways that no other relationships do. I am experiencing this on several different levels with my preschool-through-teenage children. And while I don’t have any grown children, I’ve witnessed first-hand just how rich the parent-child relationship can be after the child grows into adulthood. In my opinion, one of the most fulfilling aspects of parenting is getting to know your children.
Back when our eldest was our only child, I didn’t realize just how early a child’s personality begins to manifest. Because I didn’t expect to be able to get to know my baby’s personality until he could at least speak, I don’t think I paid too much attention to behaviors that could have given me a clue that Samuel was a methodical, logical, and analytical person. I just accepted all his behaviors as normal for a child of his age—that is, until his little brother came along when Samuel was 22 months old. That’s when I realized that even babies have personality traits.
I recently read an article about falling birth rates. The author cited many factors that keep modern people from wanting to have as many children as past generations, and one common reason is that prospective parents just don’t “feel ready.” In fact, the author went on to share a statistic that for a growing number of couples, the only reason they had a child was because of an unplanned pregnancy.
While my husband and I are obviously not part of this modern trend towards having fewer children or having no children at all, we still wrestled with uncertainty and fears before starting to have children.
My kids are growing up! My husband and I have actually reached the stage of starting to help our older children develop marketable skills and try to figure out what they want to do in life. These days, I find myself contemplating the nature and goals of parenting more than ever before.
This post first appeared on this blog in November 2014, but I had to delete the original because, during my five-and-a-half-year blogging hiatus, it became the target of literally tens of thousands of spam comments! I now have six kids, from 13 years down to 23 months, but everything I wrote here about my attitude and approach to parenting still holds true!
Parenting is a humbling process. I say “process,” not “job,” because while the end goal of this adventure is a constant, the day-to-day details change over time. My biggest dream for my children is that they would grow up to love and follow Jesus. Period. But how to encourage them in that direction looks very different as they age from 7 days, to 7 months, to 7 years. And the frequent changes and mistakes I make as I adapt to my maturing children remind me how much I still have to learn about this parenting gig.
This post first appeared on Assist News Service in May 2015.
We live in Ukraine. My husband and I are missionaries, and we have four sons (ages 8, 6, 4, and 2) who are growing up here. Three of them were even born here. In some respects, their childhood is unfolding similarly to how it would if we were living in the United States. In other respects, it is very different. I think these differences are enriching, rather than impoverishing, and I want them to recognize that too.
Recently my kids and their American cousins who also live here in Ukraine were playing make-believe. But while some kids play Doctor, and other kids play Cops and Robbers, these kids were playing something quite different.
This post first appeared on Assist News Service under the title “Medicine and Faith” in April 2015.
My first exposure to the Ukrainian medical system came early on. I moved to Ukraine to begin life with my husband, who had already been living here for ten years with his parents and siblings. At our wedding ceremony in Kyiv, one of the groomsmen, my husband’s 11-year-old brother Aaron, fainted. I will never forget the sickening sound of his head striking the tiled floor. He ended up spending about a month in the hospital.
During that time, my mother-in-law practically lived at the hospital with her youngest son, but I didn’t know why. Later I would learn that most nursing care in Ukraine only provides medical services. Nurses give injections, administer I.V.s, take blood pressure, etc. If a patient isn’t able to fend for himself, he needs a caretaker around the clock. My brother-in-law needed someone to feed him, help him use a bedpan, give him sponge baths, change his sheets, and even turn off his I.V.s when the fluid ran low.
This post originally appeared on the Assist News website in February 2015.
We are on our way back to Ukraine after a two-month furlough in the United States. Before having kids, we usually only spent a month at a time in the U.S., but we would travel there every other year, and sometimes more frequently when important family events required it. Since having kids, however, we have settled into a schedule of visiting for two months once every three years.
Scheduling our furloughs three years apart allows us to focus on our ministry in Ukraine without too many interruptions. At the same time, these furloughs are frequent enough to give us regular opportunities to gain valuable perspective on the work we’re doing and hone our vision in all areas, from church planting, to discipleship, to marriage, to parenting. The latter especially interests me, since most of what I do from day to day revolves around our four young children, and honestly, sometimes it all feels overwhelming.
We’re in an unusual position as we navigate the joys and pitfalls of raising third-culture kids, children who grow up in a culture outside their parents’ home culture. We know a few other American families with kids in Ukraine, but most of our friends are Ukrainian. While many of the issues we face with our kids are the same, there are differences based on the fact that the language of our home is mostly English, and the culture of our family is predominantly American. So from time to time, it can be helpful to talk to other American moms and and learn things like the best educational children’s shows or whether the newest Bible story book is worth purchasing or not. This furlough provided plenty of opportunities for exchanges like this.
One topic that came up frequently was homeschooling.
Unlike the United States, Ukraine does not have many dark-skinned people, or Asians, for that matter. It's a fairly homogenous white society, which means that anyone of non-European descent stands out and might be exposed to ridicule, or worse. However, although I'm half Japanese, I've been fortunate.
I have not experienced any racism here. Until recently.
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One afternoon not too long ago my husband and I were on a date. All we were doing was sitting on a park bench talking, but since we didn't have the kids with us, it felt like a holiday. One nice thing about being out and about without kids is the ability to people watch, and on this day we saw something fascinating. It was a mother with three daughters about the same ages as our three sons. (That would be 5, 3, and 1, for those of you keeping score.) She parked her stroller by a bench, let her toddler out, then sat down and opened a book.