We once were

I have a daughter that seems to teach me something new on a regular basis. She teaches me these new things not because she learns something new and shares it with me but because I learn something new as a result of being her mother. I have other daughters that seem to not make me learn and change near as much as that one does. But somehow that daughter...without trying...makes me learn something new about parenting and often about myself on a regular basis.

That happened again this week.

This daughter did nothing to bring about the change...or rather, the revelation...that I went through. As a result to a conversation about that daughter I saw something about her...about me...that I haven't seen before.

As a parent teachings new things to our children is standard. We taught them to eat, to walk, and in some way to talk. We taught them colors and shapes and a whole slew of other things. When behavior issues cropped up we taught them how to behave. Either by teaching them not to act a certain way or by letting them act however they wanted.

Parenting is often a combination of teaching them from both of those methods with a lot of teaching by example happening too. Only...I have found that often while I'm in the middle of being mom I don't always notice when we've passed from one phase into another.

That was the case with this daughter, with this lesson I so recently learned. Only for me the lesson was more about me than it will ever be about her. You see...this daughter challenges me, she stretches me to the limits of what I know about parenthood and she pushes me past them. Often times I don't quite know how to handle those challenges. And so I do what all parents do...I get through them the best way I know how at the time.

But this latest incident showed me something I didn't know. As I reminded my husband of what all that child has been through, he told me that just because she was there doesn't mean we need to leave her there.

And that got me to thinking.

About that daughter but also about me. Just because we once were something doesn't mean we have to stay that way. Just because we once did something doesn't mean we have to continue to do it. Even the good things may have a season in our lives and in time need to be set aside.

I have thought a lot about what my husband said since he said it. Thought about it and how it pertains to that daughter, thought about how that same statement can be applied to so much of life.

I have a tote that holds clothes that my children wore when they were little. I look through that tote from time to time, often with the thought in mind that I should get rid of the clothes, and as I look through them I remember when my children wore them. I remember how tiny they were or how my daughter learned to walk in those shoes or my son wore that shirt day after day and I had to wash it while he was sleeping. The clothes bring back memories but as I think of that tote now I am also reminded of something else...as my children grew I had to remove those clothes from their closets and dressers, even favorite clothes had their season of wear then had to be set aside when they no longer fit. As my children outgrew the clothes they moved beyond them. The old was outgrown and the new grown into.

The same thing happens with phases and ages in childhood. And it happens in our Spiritual walk. We grow. We change. The Lord makes us into what he wants us to be. He takes us from what we once were and turns us into what we are now.

Just because we were once that way doesn't mean we have to be left there.