The Hope and Heartache of Babies

"Do you really want to bring a child into this crazy world?" That's the opening sentence of our "Hope" chapter in Start Your Family. We go on to say,

News stories constantly tell us how unstable our world is--our global relationships, our economy, our political processes, our environment. Closer to home, couples everywhere face concerns in their corners of the world--they worry about their jobs, their health, their neighborhoods. Many worry about family relationships--especially those who have experienced the shrapnel of divorce. These concerns cause anxiety even among couples that are expecting healthy babies. The prospect of a problem pregnancy, miscarriage, delivery problem, still-birth, or a baby born with any number of health challenges or disabilities can almost paralyze a couple. ... While fear and anxiety are a natural emotion for would-be parents, the choice to be fruitful is an eduring and courageous encounter with hope.

We had our own share of reasons to be anxious about becoming parents. But nothing like what many couples go through. In the past week, Sarah and Matt Hammitt (of Sanctus Real) began walking out an extreme version of challenge with their newborn son, Bowen. A few weeks ago I blogged about Matt's song "Lead Me." Lately I've been following their family blog, reading about their faith in the midst of great challenge and the ups and downs of a critically ill newborn.

Their courage is inspiring, their journey far from over. Please read their story and join the many believers who are praying for Bowen.

UPDATE

I love what Matt wrote this morning on Bowen's blog, with the dawn of hope, about the messiness that can come with new life:

This morning is the last time I’ll get to peer through the window to Bowen’s beating heart. I can’t believe, that in such a short amount of time, it’s become normal for me to look down at my son with his little chest wide open. A friend told me that I’ve seen too much, but I’m realizing that I might not see enough. Everything I’ve watched happen in this hospital, all the pain I’ve felt, is deepening my faith, strengthening my marriage, and molding my character. As I lovingly stared into Bowen’s eyes just before midnight, my face only inches from his chest, I thought, “this love is an awesome mess.” I know I’m not the first person to think or to say something like that. ... I believe it’s because tension is the place where the worst of life and the best of true hope meet to unveil our eyes to God’s artistic work of redemption.

Family Camp Rocks!

Prior to saying yes to speak at the Ozark Conference Center, I knew next to nothing about Family Camp. I’d heard my friend Julie mention Family Camp, but figured it was just an outing her church did. Boy did I have a lot to learn!

Our friend John Thomas provided the perfect opportunity. He asked if we'd like to spend Labor Day in Solgohachia, Arkansas, talking to 20 families in the mornings, then spending the rest of the days doing Family Camp.

Not only is Family Camp bigger than one church and even one denomination, it's a fast growing, nation-wide phenomenon. (Ok, maybe not a phenomenon, but it is popular!)

Our induction to Family Camp was here, in Solgohachia, AR, at the Ozark Conference Center (OCC).

In it's early days, OCC's mission was to bring inspirational speakers such as J.I. Packer, Jerry Bridges, and Elisabeth Elliot to the spiritually hungry in Arkansas. We were humbled thinking about the speakers who had come before us, but we felt God's anointing in presenting the things He's been teaching us about fruitfulness, God-oriented parenting, and living intentionally.

It's not a ritzy getaway. (This tractor was our transportation. And that's John--Camp Director, pastor, and chief tractor driver.)

But that's the point. Instead, it was a long weekend of making new friends

alongside swimming,

games,

archery and turns on the zipline and scream swing,

meals in the mess hall,

morning devotions and worship, evening prayers under the stars, and more.

We played a Family Camp version of Survivor.

We painted our faces, gave ourselves a name (Rockin' Dynotastic Anacondas), and competed hard for the prizes. (Not sure what they were, but we had fun trying!)

Most importantly, we enjoyed it all together as a family.

We sure hope to do it all again next year...and maybe even meet some of our readers there.

Andrew Peterson Counting Stars, Playing Guitar, LIVE

A few weeks ago, I'd never heard of Andrew Peterson.

Then Steve mentioned that AP's new CD was full of songs about doing family.

Then, like someone who's never seen a white Toyota Sienna until after they buy one — and then that's the only car they seem to notice everywhere — I started seeing tweets about Andrew and his upcoming release of Counting Stars.

The next thing I know, Steve's scheduling dinner with Andrew and Steve Ford of Centricity Music, and time in the studio to record an interview for the Boundless Show.

And what an amazing time it was! This guy's album is a soundtrack for the life of a couple in the trenches of making a good marriage and raising kids for God's glory.

And his books have captured our kids' imaginations.

I hope you'll take a minute to listen to him play his guitar and talk about why family is at the center, right next to his passionate faith in God.

In Day Care, the Ends Aren't Everything

Last Sunday, after eating scrambled eggs and donuts for brunch, we shifted to the living room for coffee and conversation with our guests, a young newly married couple in the throes of a job search. He, a recent engineering grad is in full-on résumé mode. Suit at the ready, he's pursuing every possible lead so he can provide for his family. She, a liberal arts grad, is content to see where his job search takes them and then look for work once they're settled. They've been married one year and are ready to start their family.

As they talked through their prospects, including one offer that would pay him less than their minimum budget, she teared up with the reminder that she may have to "work indefinitely." If Leah McLaren were in the room, she'd undoubtedly encourage my friend to buck up, get a job she loves and stay with it. Even after the babies arrive. Such is her advice in her recent column "Ditch the guilt, working moms: the kids are all right."

She writes,

... intense stay-at-home mothering isn't the way human relationships work. Parenting involves a lot of chores, but ultimately it's a relationship that, like all relationships, requires delicacy and balance. Even the new mothers who I do know are quitting their full-time jobs these days are doing so in order to pursue more flexible career options. Few if any would consider devoting themselves completely to child care. This is because most women know instinctively what this study and others suggest: that parenting 24/7 won't make you a better mother any more than quitting your job to take care of your spouse will make you a better wife.

Sure, your three-year-old would prefer it if you sat on the floor playing Lego with him all day, but he'd also prefer to eat nothing but Froot Loops. That's the thing about three-year-olds: They don't actually know what's good for them. And they certainly don't know what's good for you.

It was only a generation ago that married women were made to feel selfish and “unnatural” for having careers of their own. Yet miraculously our partners thrived and now our kids will, too. So do yourself and society a favour, moms: Ignore the guilt, buy a new suit and get back to work as soon as you want to.

In McLaren's world, it's all about the Mommies.

The real question is: Is staying home with babies generally good for the mental development and behaviour of most new mothers?

My take, based on the overwhelming anecdotal evidence of my peers, 80 per cent of whom are in the throes of early parenthood, is: absolutely not.

The problem with McLaren's view is what's missing: the babies. It was fairly easy for me to balance work and baby when we only had one. And I worked from home. But Zoe's arrival upped the ante. As I wrote in Start Your Family,

I was figuring out what mothers have known for generations — your child wants you, all of you, and he isn't interested in being a second-tier priority. For all the things you might want to hold on to and fit a child around — your work, your lifestyle, your identity — your child needs you to be the one doing the fitting.

To sacrifice so much, for someone so small, is a call many in our culture never consider. At least not seriously. McLaren is certainly not alone in her zeal to dismiss mother-guilt. In Home-Alone America, author Mary Eberstadt says,

Of all the explosive subjects in America today, none is as cordoned off, as surrounded by rhetorical land mines, as the question of whether and just how much children need their parents — especially their mothers. In an age littered with discarded taboos, this one in particular remains virtually untouched. ... For decades everything about the unfettered modern woman — her opportunities her anxieties, her choices, her having or not having it all has been dissected to the smallest detail. ... the ideological spotlight remains the same: It is on the grown women and what they want and need.

It turns everything upside down when you shift from thinking about what set-up would be optimal for you, to thinking about what would be best for a child. In a startling insight, author and mother Danielle Crittenden applies such upside-down thinking to day care:

So far as I know, there has never been a poll done on three- and four-year-olds, but if there were, I doubt the majority would say that they are happier" and "better off" with their mothers away all day. ... A six-year-old is indifferent to the arguments of why it is important for women to be in the office, rather than at home. What children understand is what they experience, vividly, every day, moment to moment; and for thousands of children who are placed into full-time care before they have learned how to express their first smile, that is the inexplicable loss of the person whom they love most in the world.

McLaren concludes, "Your kids aren't going to suffer for it," based on a longitudinal study of 2,000 kids in the UK 1,400 in the U.S. But it's not enough that most kids who grow up in day care turn out fine. Eberstadt says,

To advocates this is where the controversy over day care begins and ends; case closed. But they are wrong. The notion that "most kids will turn out fine anyway" does not end the question of whether institutional care is good or bad; actually, it should be only the beginning. That other question, about immediate effects, demands to be answered, too. It is not about whether day care might keep your child out of Harvard ten or twenty years from now or launch him into it, but, rather, about the independent right or wrong of what happens to him today during the years that he is most vulnerable and unknowing.

Eberstadt is a realist. She knows some families will have no choice, noting, "Yes, many parents have to use day care." But she is not so calloused to the cries of the very young and vulnerable as to think necessity for some justifies day care for all. "There is a difference," she writes, "between having to use it and celebrating the institution full-throttle."

My friend's tears, at the prospect of being among those who have no choice, well-up against McLaren's vision for a generation of Mommys liberated from Legos and Fruit Loops — at the expense of their own children. They fill me with hope that Isaiah 49:15, "Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne?" is still, at least for some, a rhetorical question.

Hiking with Kids

Once upon a time, I wrote an article about family hikes. In it I said, "We figured if we raised two kids in Colorado and never got out in nature, they'd never let us live it down. So we bought some hiking boots and a guide to the Pikes Peak region and started walking." That was five years ago. Since then, we've had two more kids and out of necessity, slowed down our pace. Recently we dusted off our trail book, laced up our hiking boots, and headed back to nature.

Turns out my advice back then still holds. Even with twice the number of kids (maybe more so). Things like:

Don't be afraid to try something new.

Do it for the kids.

Make it fun.

Five years ago I wrote, "Encouraging a four year old to keep going to the end of a 2-mile hike can be a chore. But when he knows there's a root beer float waiting for him at the end of the trail he's more likely to embrace the challenge. And when his little legs get tired and he starts begging for someone to carry him, we often divert his attention by singing songs or practicing his letters ('What does apple start with?', 'How about baseball?', etc.)"

Maybe I should have actually read that old article before we went hiking. Confession: I remembered it after the hike, while editing these photos. And so instead of having a clever game ready to distract our three-year-old, and certainly no plan in place for root beer floats post-hike, Steve carried our 20 month old in the back pack and the three year old in his arms. (Ibuprofen anyone?)

But even being less-than-prepared, we made lots of memories in a beautiful place.

Back then I wrote about the joys of guilt-free chocolate on the trail. "Who wouldn't love a reason to eat some favorite high-energy snacks, knowing the exercise involved will burn those calories?!" For this hike I forgot to buy snacks before we left.

And so, we stopped here.

For snacks.

Very salty snacks. We should have brought more water than we did.

Instead, we shared our one water bottle and focused on some more of that advice: The thrill of discovery.

There's something new and innocent about a child discovering God's creation for the first time. A new bird, a bubbling stream -- or in this case, our state flower.

All these and more provide lots of oohs and ahhs on the trail while instilling a respect for nature.

Realizing "they can do it" is a big deal for little ones. Each step taken over rough terrain, each trail completed, even the occasional scraped knee can build self-esteem in kids. And even if they don't self-actualize, they'll be glad for some undistracted time with their favorite toys: Mom and Dad.

Neils Family Photos

What a pleasure it was to be with an old friend today. Even more so to be able to photograph her beautiful girls and newborn son. (It's no surprise we haven't seen each other, what with all these kids running around!) We had a full house in our red living room. And later, outside.

Summer Reading for Kids

I still remember inhaling the classics, The Hound of the Baskervilles and Treasure Island, greatly abridged, with pictures on every other page, the summer my Dad let me read my way to a new bike. I think that may have been the only summer he "paid" me to read. I remember feeling a little guilty about the whole thing. It was fun to earn the prize, but I would have read anyway. Good books are their own reward.

Our kids seem to be cut from the same cloth. They love the library reading challenge and speed through books on their way to temporary tatoos, stickers, cheap plush toys, and entries into drawings for slip-n-slides and tickets to minor league baseball games, but they're still reading well into July, weeks after earning all the library has to give.

Their favorites at present are mysteries. Harrison is working his way through all the old Hardy Boys books and Zoe's hooked on American Girl Mysteries. What about your kids? Do they like to read? And if so, what? Does their summer reading differ from what they spend time on during the school year?

UPDATED

Thanks to all my mom friends who sent in their kids' favorite titles. Here's a partial list, some of which I've read.

• Stuart Little
• Robin Hood
• Dick and Jane
• From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
• by E.L. Konigsburg
• Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell
• Phantom Tollbooth
• The Janitor's Boy (same author as Frindle)
• I've heard Mr. Pipes
• Misty of Chincoteague
• Henry and Ribsy
• The Magician's Nephew
• Old Yeller
• My Friend Flicka
• The World at Her Fingertips: The Story of Helen Keller
• Out of the Darkness: The Story of Louis Braille
• Shipwrecked
• A Traitor Among Us
• Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang
• The Wizard of Oz
• The Redwall Series
• Adventures of Pinochhio
• Roller Skates
• The Door in the Wall
• Darkness over Denmark
• The Mysterious Benedict Society Trilogy
• The Sign of the Beaver
• The City of Ember (four book series)