The other evening, while at the women's dinner out here at the ranch, I had one of those 'slap you in the face' moments from the Lord. It was totally divine, and completely awesome.
As you know, we've been restructuring alot of how we do things around the Morrow household in terms of teaching and disciplining our children. Sadly, this came as the result of doing these two things 'brainless and heartless' for several years, until the light bulb went on and we finally asked the Lord what he would have us do. Not surprisingly, he started leading us in the opposite direction from which we were presently traveling. It has been months upon months of praying, listening, experimenting, failing, and succeeding, but we have settled into a routine that feels emotionally and spiritually healthy to our family, and that is a huge blessing. I never ask myself the question 'Why am I doing this? I hate this!' while instructing or disciplining the kiddos, and that in itself is entirely freeing.
In the early years, not so long ago, I was just blindly following the crowd around me, even though day to day I was shriveling up inside with conviction and doubt. I felt like what I was doing was stealing life from my kids, my self, my husband, my family. I felt like I was trying to put too many firm borders on my family, for no other reason than I felt like I was 'supposed to'. Not a convicted from the Lord supposed to, but a everyone else is doing this supposed to. What I say daily in the hearts of my family was devastating. I felt like my man was stumbling to get his footing and gain respect while trying to settle into our 'family plan', and I saw the hearts of my children starting to loose their child likeness. They were loosing their girly screams, they were loosing their endless laughter, they were loosing their shiny smiling eyes, and they were becoming restricted.
This was the kicker, when I saw this all happening, that finally freed my heart to look at other options for child training. I knew what we were doing was stealing life and joy, and not promoting the love of God in our family. I was inhibiting their child likeness, and I wanted them to experience joy and freedom and innocence and childish fun. I wanted them to have insanely fun chaotic moments, within safe boundaries and borders. But, I didn't want them to be so surrounded by these borders that they only concentrated on them. I only wanted them to recognize these borders when they bumped up against them. Other than that, I wanted the to be totally free to be them.
The other night at the women's dinner I was talking with a friend about her beautiful back yard and gardens. They are truly immaculate. So well planned, so well placed, so well thought out. This year she added yet another 'bed' to her garden on the edge of her yard, a sort of border if you will. Once again, a masterpiece. She was talking about her plants, and her 'beds' and in doing so brought up a conversation that she had had with a young girl out here more recently. This women had asked the young girl if and where she thought they should add yet another flower bed to her yard, and the girls response:
"Make sure you leave enough room to twirl."
This one simple sentenced slapped me in the face harder than most other things have in my life. This is what had felt so wrong to me about our 'old ways' of training our children, and this is what feels SO right about this new way of training our children. We are leaving enough room for them to 'twirl'. Isn't that just a beautiful image, of a young girl, in a summer dress, on a summer day, in a green lawn, surrounded by beautiful flowers. Her head is tipped back with her face towards the sky, sun streaming down through her blond hair, her eyes are closed, her arms are out, and she is twirling.
Not a care in the world.
I want to give that to my children. And I am so extremely satisfied when I do. The freedom to be innocent, to have not a care in the world. The freedom to connect with who the Lord made them to be. To feel like a pretty little princess, adored by her King. To feel confident in who they are as young young women.
I once heard that a goldfish, if alive long enough, will eventually grow to fit the size of the bowl it lives in. Meaning, stick that goldfish in a tiny little bowl, you're going to always have a tiny little fish. BUT.....stick that same fish in a huge aquarium, eventually you're going to end up with a healthy size fish. Why? This fish has been allowed to develop and grow into who it was made to be. It was given the freedom to be all that it was meant to be.
Now....back to the little girl.
Lets say this girl is twirling and twirling in this yard, soaking in the sun, her mind off on things even more beautiful than the garden she is in, when all of a sudden the texture of the ground under her bare feet changes from soft green grass, to sharp rough bark chips. Is this girl gonna keep on twirling? Maybe. She might just step once into that bark, in that flower bed, that is a border on that lawn, and be able to quickly remind herself that border in there and move back in to innocent twirling. But....there is a good chance when she does bump into that border, its going to jolt her into another world. Her eyes are going to pop open, her feet are going to start burning, and she's going to have to stop twirling in order to deal with the situation at hand. She has bumped into a border. She' gonna sit down, and start picking all of those bark dust slivers from her feet. Her mind in no longer in 'fantasy land' but now in reality. She's thinking through how she got too close to that border, she's making a plan to avoid this next time, to prolong the twirling. She's mapping things out in her head, wanting to go back to her 'freedom' but at the same time hoping to stay aware of the 'dangers' at hand. Once she's finished picking the pokies out of her feet, and finished processing through her new plan, she goes back to the safe center of the yard, surrounded by the borders of beautiful gardens, tilts her head back, and the twirling begins again. There has been a lesson learned in there, but her freedom remains in tact, and her heart remains in contentment.
This is what I more than anything want to provide for my girls. A place of freedom and innocence, surrounded by 'beautiful' borders. Just like the gardener, I want my borders to be well planned, well placed, and thought out. I want them to create the most unobstructed environment possible in order to insure optimal 'twirling space', but I want them to remain there intact indeed. I don't want the borders to be the focus, but only the reminder. I want the twirling to be the focus. And when a well placed border is bumped into, we will certainly do the work it takes to learn the lesson. But once the lesson is learned, we will return to the wonderful joy that childhood is as quickly as possible.
After all, childhood is short. We must leave time for twirling.
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