The other night Matt and I sat in
the living room and talked with Claire about life and choices and God’s word.
All the kids filtered in after a while. Henry strummed his guitar. Adam bounced
off the walls while sporadically interjecting thoughtful comments. Emmie
cuddled up on my right side and drew a picture and Kate cuddled up on my left
side and kept hushing me because she was "reading" a novel.
The time filled my eyes with tears. I could physically feel the love in my chest. Matt and I kept making eye
contact across the room and subtly pointing to our hearts as a way of silently
asking, "Can you feel what I'm feeling right now?" It was an evening
of connection and it was a balm to my momma heart. Because as anyone who has
been a parent for more than a minute knows, moments like this are not the norm.
The norm more accurately looks like addressing the same behaviors, attitudes
and grievances repeatedly and praying that one day it clicks … or God convicts.
Seriously.
But guess what? Those moments, the
ones that force you to dig deep and persevere, those are the times when love is
taking root. Love is not endless moments spent on the mountain top. Rather,
deep and lasting love is cultivated during moments in the valley, when our
commitment is greater than any delightful emotion.
Love IS patient … kind … and not
easily angered.
The concrete actions that show
patience, kindness and control give skin to the more abstract act of “being
loving.” The mountain top moments, as welcome as they are, really don't require
us to practice patience, kindness, or self-control. Those actions come easily when peace abounds. Rather, the
cultivating of these life-giving habits and responses happens in the hard
moments. The moments spent in the valley are where we grow as parents. They are
where we show our kids what enduring love looks like.
The valleys still exhaust me. I’m
sure they will for a lifetime. But I do know that without the hard, it’s easy
for me to take the delightful for granted. Without the hours upon hours that
Matt and I have poured into training (and re-training) our kids, the heart-bursting,
valley-top moment we savored the other night wouldn’t have impacted us the way that it did.
Momma’s and Dada’s, do NOT grow
weary in doing good. Do not! Your mountain top moments are waiting, and you are
not laboring in vain.
