There aren’t many things scarier than birthing a child that is almost an exact copy of yourself.
My precious daughter. My precious middle child. She is turning six on Sunday. She has empathy. She can sense every emotion in every room. She feels it. It’s her true and honest desire that everyone be happy. If you hand her a cookie, she will hand it to someone else first, and hope there’s a second for her. And if there’s not, she will still smile and she’ll watch her siblings eat it with joy, knowing that they are happy.
I was just like that. I spent my entire childhood tending to the emotions of others. Just for it to be fruitless and painful. These experiences made me bitter, hard hearted and broken.
I have learned so much in the last few years, and as scary as it is to raise a little girl who I fear will turn out like me. It is also the most empowering and healing thing God could’ve given to me. Because I get to sit down with her on the floor with blocks, and I get to share truths with her. Scriptural truths about how people can choose to be happy in any situation and they can also choose to be unhappy in any situation. so for us to strive to make other people happy is pointless, but it is also detrimental to the people around us. Because as long as we are serving and working to appease their every whim they are not pushed to stand on their own 2 feet and choose joy, dignity, and strength. By us pouring so much of our own energy and resources into making other people happy we are crippling them, because experiencing hardships is a huge part of maturing and growing up as people. To be able to teach my little girl that there is a difference in loving and enabling brings me so much hope. To talk about when it is okay to take the first cookie vs when to pass it on is just as beneficial for me as it is her.
I am so excited to see where God takes her and what God will do in her life. One day she will be 28 and I will get to see what it would look like if I had been taught these things, and I will know that by the power of God in me I have ended the multi generational curse of parentification and martyrdom of children in my family.
Let us not be lazy in the race simply because our parents didn’t run it at all. Let us set the pace for the next generation!
Let us go the extra mile and address the hard things. Let us not put off the hard stuff until it is too late. Let not our pride stand between us and our children’s understanding of the world.
Let us set the example of resilience.
