Dear Gabe,

Five years ago tonight I was sitting on a bed, exhausted and confused.  And exhausted.  Really exhausted.  Have I mentioned that?

Why?  I was a mother.  A brand new mother.  Fresh from the delivery room with a whole new identity.  Who had no clue how long to feed you and who couldn’t change a diaper fast enough to avoid being sprayed and who was desperately worried the nurses were going to get mad at me for keeping you in bed beside me.  You were having none of your hospital-issued bassinet, but truth be told, I was only too happy to have you beside me where I could look at your or touch you or snuggle you any time I wanted.

You were perfect.

I counted the hours, marveling when you were 6 hours old, 12 hours old, 24 hours old – a WHOLE day!   I couldn’t imagine what you’d look like when you were a week old, how long you’d be when you were a month old, what your smile would look like when you were six months old, what words you’d say when you were a whole year old.  Five years wasn’t even a distant thought to me.  It was incomprehensible!

And yet here we are!

Truth?  I still count the days.  We have already covered a quarter of the days we’ll probably spend with you living at home as a child.  A quarter of it has gone!  There are not even words to express how heavy that makes my heart.  On the eve of your fifth birthday, Dad and I tucked you in and came downstairs and hugged each other while we cried.  I whispered the only words I could muster. “It’s going too fast!“  And it is.

At least I think it is.  You, on the other hand, told us tonight that it takes a long time to get to be a grown-up.  It does.  You’re right.  I remember being a child myself and noticing how slowly time crawled – the time from one Friday to the next was an eternity, and the time between Christmases was like eternity a hundred times over.  I couldn’t wait to grow up.  I couldn’t wait to be in charge.  I couldn’t wait to have my life be exactly like what I wanted.

You know what I wanted all those years ago?  This.  A husband who loves me and a child to mother.  A house to keep us warm, a kitchen in which I could make tasty treats for us all to enjoy, and traditions and beauty that could fill our hearts and make us smile.  Now that I have everything I wanted, the time moves more quickly.   Much more quickly.

There will never be enough days.  There will especially never be enough days with you.  I want to be the best mom to you I can be, but everytime I think I figure something out you grow a little and change a little and I have to figure out my place once again.  You keep me on my toes and are always at least a step ahead.  This is made easier for you by the fact that it is not my natural inclination to let go.

That’s what I’ve learned about parenting.   It’s a constant process of letting go, of encouraging independence, of working yourself out of a job.  And truth be told, this is the only “job” I’ve ever had that I’ve loved this much.  Most days I feel like I stink at it, but I feel infinitely blessed to be able to wake up the next morning and do it again.  Not that I get much better at it.  I try, but this is really hard work.  Honestly, I feel just as confused today as I did that night five years ago while I sat on the bed and looked at you.  I might even be more confused now than I was then.  I remember looking at you all over and looking forward to the day when I’d “get” what I was supposed to do.  I didn’t realize that  the confused feelings only get bigger, not smaller.

I may be a little biased, but I believe your potential is limitless!  This is one of the things about parenting that is so confusing.  Your potential is so great and I don’t want to do anything to channel it in the wrong direction or put a lid on it prematurely.  You have a determination unlike any I’ve seen anywhere – adult or child alike.  Your negotiating skills are those of a finely honed arbitrator.  You carry on conversations of freakishly adult proportions.  You make plans with precision, with an eye for both the short term and long term.  I wonder all the time what you’re going to be when you grow up, what kind of family you’re going to have, what kind of difference you’re going to make in the world.  I believe the universe has a job for you that matches how important and extraordinary you are.  I can’t wait to see what it is and I don’t want to miss a moment of you getting to that place.

I’m thankful for you.  I so blessed to be your mom.  What you bring to our family is so uniquely you, and I can’t imagine it any other way.  Happy 5th birthday, baby!

Love,

Mom

Dear Gabe,

One thing I’m sure you know about me is that I’m nothing if not overdramatic.  But I really mean this when I say it – today was one of the worst days of my life.  It might sound like it on paper, but there’s nothing overdramatic about that statement in reality.  Nothing precipitated this awful day.  Nothing awful has happened.  You’ve been great.  Daddy and I are having great conversations and are working well together as a team.  The bills are paid.  We all have free time – time to play and time to have fun.

But for whatever reason, I just hit the fan today.  I think the fact that I had no reason to hit the fan made it all the worse.  I was overwhelmed.  Sure, you talked back.  But you do that – it’s nothing new.  And let’s face it: you’re four.  Talking back is par for the course, and we usually handle it.  Yes, there was a mess.  Messes can totally set me over the edge, especially when every step I take leaves crumbs dripping off my feet.  But again, messes are nothing new around here, and they’re certainly not things that can’t be easily remedied.   And yes, you got up early – earlier than I wanted.  I was still tired.  But again, what’s new?  I’m always tired.  I never get enough sleep.  Usually I’ve gotten less sleep than what I got last night.  And usually it’s okay.  I can’t even blame it on hormones.  There’s nothing fertility-wise going on right now.  I’m not hoping or dealing with dashed hopes or dealing with highs and lows or anything.  I did have a particularly uncomfortable acupuncture appointment several days ago and I think that’s actually what stirred things up, but it’s nothing I can change and it’s nothing that hasn’t happened before.

Today, I snapped.  I was short with you.  I didn’t extend you much grace.  I spoke sternly to you when I normally would have used a gentler tone.  I sent you to the steps or to your room several times when what you probably needed was someone to look you in the eyes and say, “Let’s do something together.  What do you want to play?”

I regretted it while it was happening.  I tried to fix it while it was happening.  But it just kept getting worse.  Finally, with you in your room and me trying frantically to get my head back on my shoulders, I buried my face in a pile of coat sleeves and screamed.  A deep, long, aching scream.  It shook my body.  It made my back ache.  Its humitidy fogged my glasses.  (No, you didn’t hear it.  You were far enough away and there were suffient coats that the result was quite muffled.)  And then I cried.  I cried that the soul inside me felt tumultuous.  I cried that I hadn’t done better for you.  I cried that I had wasted this day – a day I could have spent with you rather than in the parallel existence that occurred.

Several times today – and probably dozens of time short of what was needed – I asked you to forgive me.  You said, “Sure!” with a smile in your voice, and I cried again.  I love you.  My heart swelled when you said that.  There is something powerful about receiving grace from a child.  There’s something healing and wise about it, too.  I hope age doesn’t steal that wisdom from you.

Later, after you and Dad had left for Grandma and Grandpa’s and I had found a little bit of my sanity in some retail therapy, I replayed the day.  I wished for a rewind button, a chance to do better by you.  And for you.  Because it could have been so much better.  It should have been.  But there aren’t really any second chances.  New chances, yes.  But no second chances.

When I was about to start crying again – this time in public while fumbling over shirts and shoes and things like that – God said something to me.  He said, “Heidi, what did you expect?  You’re only human!  I know this.  I made you.  This is less of a judgment and more of a fact.  You’re human and you just can’t do this perfectly.  You can’t.  But I can.  You are my hands on earth to this boy, but when you fail, I’m perfectly able to cover the gaps.  It’s what I do.  I father the fatherless.  I’m love.  I cover a multitude of wrongs.”

For what seemed like the first time in hours, I breathed again.  I worry so much, most of all about wanting to be the best mother for you I can be.  The time goes so fast.  Just yesterday we sat discussing – actually discussing – your fifth birthday party.  You will be five!  And you want a carnival for a party.  You don’t smell like a baby anymore.  You read.  You tell jokes.  And you laugh endlessly over loud noises and farts and things like that.  That’s how I know for sure you’re not a baby anymore – you’re just my baby.  You’re a little boy who will soon be a big boy and before I know it will be a man.  I’m not ready for that, but it seems every time I breathe you age several years.

I want to bottle you up. I want to save this time we spend together for a time when I am wiser and more patient and more skilled at enjoying individual moments rather than being overwhelmed by their totality.  But – Captain Obvious speaking – I can’t do that.  So I get it wrong and reflect and write you letters and apologize a hundred times over and hope for a better tomorrow.

Which, actually, it probably will be because you and Daddy are off exploring the world while I’m staying home alone for the weekend.  I asked him to be super nice and gentle and sweet this weekend to make up for my breakdown today.

But tonight I’m also resting in the knowledge that  apparently God was expecting today’s total collapse and He said He can cover the distance between the mother I am to you and the mother you need.  I’m so very, very thankful for that.

Love,

Mom

Dear Gabe,

I’ve wondered about this day. I’ve wondered about this day for around four and a half years. I’ve wondered if this day would happen. I’ve wondered how old you’d be. I’ve wondered what you’d say – how it would come up. I’ve wondered when you’d understand. I’ve wondered what would tip you over the edge. I’ve wondered who’d be with you, or if you’d be all by yourself.

Today, you asked me how you could become a friend of God and Jesus.

We have several children’s books about God, and lately you’ve been fascinated with a few of them – What Happens When We Die and Who is Jesus? I can’t say this didn’t perplex me a bit, but I read them anyway because it seemed good to follow your lead.

But perhaps I should back up. There are two things you need to know. First, I spent much of my growing-up years being terrified about Hell. Without going into lots of detail, I will tell you that my childhood fears have largely informed my parenting of you in this capacity, and we’ve been very careful not to talk much about hell because I didn’t want to scare you into “faith.” And second, you’ve pretty much indicated that you hated God. In fact, several weeks ago you told me that you hoped Jesus would have another dying day, but this time He wouldn’t come back to life so we could get Him out of here. No joke. You said exactly that.

This mindset distressed me until I realized it was partly our fault. Actually, given the fact that you’re four and don’t go to school and pretty much stay at home with us, I decided it was probably entirely our fault. Here’s why. There’s a passage in Deuteronomy 6 that says:

Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. ⁶ These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. ⁷ Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. ⁸ Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. ⁹ Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

I think these instructions are wonderful instructions to parents on how to teach their children about God. Look at the order. The first thing to be said is all about the parent’s relationship with God. What are we to do? Love God. Love Him first. Wholeheartedly. Next? Teach the children. It’s simple. It’s elegant.

It isn’t what we did.

I didn’t realize it until long after the fact, but what we did was start talking to you about what God wants you to do. We told you about His rules. It wasn’t that we didn’t love God – we did. We do. I love God now more than I did on the day you were born, more than I ever imagined possible during some of my darkest, most sad times during the last few years. But your dad and I? Well, we’re not overtly emotional people. I have to remind Daddy to tell me how he feels. If I’m going to cry, I usually want to do it privately. I’m not suggesting this is good; it just is. We have to work at this part of our lives.

I grew up in an overtly religious home. I was surrounded by and steeped in faith, in God. Grandpa and Grandma couldn’t help but talk about their faith. But even if they hadn’t, I still would have heard it coming and going because I grew up in the church. That’s another letter for another day, but I’m telling you this because when you were born, I didn’t really know what I was doing. You’d think I grew up with such great examples that I’d be readily able to pass that onto you. But I wasn’t. I was different than many of those people I watched because my inside world is so private to me. I didn’t know how to take my private thoughts and put them outside myself in a coherent, meaningful way.

Dad, on the other hand, grew up in a family that was faithful, but was more private. He developed a personal faith in God at a later age than I did, and for many reasons (also another letter for another day) we knew we wanted to raise you in such a way that you were personally sensitive to God from a younger age.

Hence our dilemma – we knew what we wanted to do but we didn’t know how to do it. So we privately slogged through our own relationships with God and tried to teach you the rules of what God wanted you to do. You know… like not hitting and not kicking and not spitting. And in not knowing how to do it, we accidentally taught you something we didn’t mean to teach you: that God is all about rules and doing the right thing and rejecting you if you don’t obey him.

Honestly, I don’t blame you for wanting to get that God “out of here!” One day, I realized you must see God more as a taskmaster than as someone who loves and cares for you. And who wants a taskmaster? I sure don’t, and anyone who has met you knows you don’t, either.

As this began dawning on me several months ago, I started trying to weave God’s goodness into our daily lives. In the last week, it has sort of reached fever pitch. I’ve been trying to explain God in four-year-old terms. You’ve seemed much more interested. This weekend, I realized I had never explained presents in God terms. This one really connected with you. The thought that God likes to give us presents completely fascinated you, and I can’t tell you how much it warmed my heart to hear you talk about how God gave you blessings and you gave those blessings to me. I got a little choked up at that one.

But not as choked up as I got tonight.

We were reading the “Jesus” book, chatting all the way through about some of the pages. First, we chatted about things we’ve done wrong. I asked you if I had done wrong things, and you told me, “Like when you get all stressed out?” I explained the stress wasn’t so much the wrong thing, but the being snappy and mean was definitely out. You told me you hit and kick and spit sometimes, and we concurred we both did wrong things. Later, we talked about Heaven, and how Jesus is preparing Heaven for us.

This is where the conversation took a different turn. Usually we imagine all sorts of things about Heaven (which we did tonight). However, tonight you told me everyone got to go to Heaven. This is something you haven’t really said before, and I told you no, that only friends of Jesus go to Heaven. I practically watched the wheels turn in your head, and you asked me where people go if they’re not friends of Heaven. This brought me into personally dangerous territory, because it required me to explain Hell. I wanted to be honest, but I didn’t want to be age-inappropriate or terrifying. So I just said that Hell was a sad place where people’s bodies didn’t feel well and they were sad and there was darkness and unhappiness. No need to draw the vivid visual pictures…

Thankfully, the “Jesus” book had given a very simple explanation – that when we do wrong things we deserve to be punished, but Jesus takes the punishment for our wrong things. You liked this. Heck – I like it too! I also liked having such simple words to use as an explanation – words with which you connected.

Without missing a beat, you told me you were a friend of God and Jesus (your term – we’ll get to the trinity when you’re 5). I said you had to ask God and Jesus to be their friends, and you told me you had thought about it in your head. Because I’ve been doing the Believing God study, I thought about Romans 10:10, which says:

¹⁰For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.

So I told you it was important for us to use words when we want to be friends with God and Jesus, that when we want to be friends with God and Jesus we tell them that we know we’ve done some wrong things and we’re thankful that Jesus died to take away our punishment and that we want to be their friend and follow them forever. We talked through each of these elements, and you were quite adamant that you’d pray… after we read the rest of your books.

We read the rest of your books – Night in the Country and a McQueen book. Actually, you read the McQueen book to me, and that bowled me over on its own. And it worked out pretty well because it gave Daddy time to get home from his softball game. I knew he wouldn’t want to miss this. He walked in just as we were discussing if you wanted to pray, and you told me you wanted me to say the words and you’d repeat what I said. So we prayed something like this:

Dear Jesus, I know I’ve done wrong things. Thank you for dying on the cross and coming back to life to take away my punishment. I want to be your friend and I want to love you and obey you for ever. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Dad and I were, of course, crying, and you were sort of hopping around. We discussed if you wanted to call anyone and tell them. At first you didn’t, but when I suggested that you could email them tomorrow, you decided to wanted to call people after all – first Grandma R, then Grandma M and finally Grandpa R. To each of them, you said, “I’m a friend of God and Jesus! Do you want to be a friend of God and Jesus, too?”

It was too cute.

So today was a big day. Today, you asked me how you could become a friend of God and Jesus. And now you are. We all are. And my heart is happy in a way I didn’t know before.

Dear Gabe,

Dear Gabe,

You turned 4 a few weeks ago! In keeping with my apparent tradition, I am writing this letter late – much too late – but I am writing it nonetheless. As I’ve told you before, the letters on your birthday are hard for me to write. As much as I love seeing you get older, I hate it. I love you, I love being your mom, and I love caring for you on a daily basis. As you get older, you need me differently and you need me less. I’m learning to adjust and appreciate the way your growth affects our relationship.

This year has been particularly hard. I spent a lot of it depressed – very depressed. And anxious. If there’s one thing to know about me, it’s that I get anxious. A lot. I don’t like it, but so far I haven’t found a way to change it. Above anything, I know it has distracted me from you. I’m sorry for that. I want to say with absolute conviction that my anxiety isn’t your fault, and it doesn’t mean anything is wrong with you. I worry that you’ll get that message.

This has been a hard year for you, too. You’ve had a lot – a LOT – of tantrums. A lot. And you’ve been hitting and kicking and spitting at us a lot. I wish we could figure out how to help you deal with your anger and anxiety. I know sleep has a big impact on your moods, but actually getting you to sleep is quite a feat! lol You are just like your mother in that you LOVE to stay awake and you hate to miss the action!

I’m excited to see your reactions this Christmas. I love giving you gifts, and I love seeing how you light up when you receive them. I can tell the whole gift experience is a love language of yours. It’s one of mine, too. It’s fun to have that in common with you.

One thing we want to try to teach you this year is about caring for others who are less fortunate. We want you to be a generous person, and although your dad and I are generous in many ways, I don’t think you notice them because you’re too young to have those things interest you. So we want to be more purposeful about helping you learn about generosity.

We also want to help you learn about picking up your own messes. You *love* to have your toys spread out all over the house. You can quickly turn it into a disaster! We know we need to be more purposeful in that regard.

I’m so excited to see what it’s like to have a four-year-old boy! You amaze me regularly and I love you so much. That will never, ever change!

Love,
Mom