Our children watch

I recently wrote about how our lives are a story being written in the book of our life and how those stories create the people that our children become (titled ‘The book we’re writing’). When I sat down to write that I had an idea of what I wanted to write and discovered that my thoughts went in sort of the right direction but that they took a turn I hadn’t even thought of. Because that happened I wish to write once again on the same topic but with the purpose of writing what I intended to write last time.

Funny how as I write sometimes I write exactly what I intended to, sometimes I had no thought in mind and I watch as the words take shape on the computer, and sometimes everything I planned to write gets pushed aside to write something I hadn’t even thought of.

When I sat down to write that last post I wanted to write about books…I did that…but I had a different point I wanted to make.

You see, I own many books, some I read and some I know I will never read again. My children have more books than I’d ever want to count. Those books have played a role in our lives and may continue to play a role in them.

The most valuable book I own is the Bible…and I own many of those. Within the pages of the Bible is not only the story of the world, not only the story of my Lord, not only the story of God’s people, but within those pages is the story of me. It holds the story of my family, the story of my marriage, the story of my children. We may not be mentioned by name but we are mentioned nonetheless. We are there in the pages, there in the words spoken and written.

It is within the pages of that Book that I find the meaning for my life, I find the reason for my life being written the way it was.

But it isn’t to that Book that my thoughts want to turn to today. As important as it is…my thoughts want to turn to the shelves of children’s book we have in our home. I think of the stories on the pages of those books. I think of the toddler books with the short sentences and intriguing pictures, I think of the chapter books with the ability to captivate my children.

And as I think of those books I also think of my children. A while back I wrote what I titled ‘Raising souls’. In it I spoke of how it took me many children and lots of years to realize that I’m not just raising little people that carry my heart with them everywhere they go but that I’m raising souls for the Lord. No matter what their eventual place with Christ is…they are souls with a purpose designed by the Lord. They have a purpose to fulfill. What that purpose is I may never know but they have one.

And it’s here in this writing and in my thoughts and heart where the words I wrote in ‘The book we’re writing’ and the words I wrote in ‘Raising souls’ meet and converge. It’s in my thoughts and here in my words as I write where those two different ideas come together to form one.

You see as I think of those many children’s books we have in our possession I think of the story my children see and learn from with each book. And then I think of the souls that my children are, the foundation that is laid in their lives with everything they do, with everything they encounter, and those thoughts become the foundation for much bigger thoughts that flow through my mind and heart.

You see we tend to see movies and books as being stories we see and listen to. Whether we like them or not we all know that those things are stories. Even the true stories are labeled as ‘stories’.

My grandmother spent many hours telling me about her life. They were the stories of my grandmother’s life. She told me stories about her parents and siblings. She told me about my mother when she was a child. She told me about life during the depression.

She told me stories of her life that transported me into the world as my grandmother knew it.

As a child I used to ask my grandpa to tell me about how he moved cross country in a covered wagon. That story fascinated me. My grandpa wasn’t a good story teller. He never made it sound like a story, never embellished it, never made it exciting or adventurous, he simply told me the facts and those facts were more than enough to captivate me with the story of how grandpa traveled in a covered wagon.

Now my children ask me to tell them stories of my childhood, they ask me to tell them stories of when they were little. Last night at midnight I was up with my five year old and for whatever reason I told him that when I was a girl we didn’t have computers, cell phones, ereaders… His little eyes grew huge and the shock on his face was clear to see.

My grandparents took me to times that I couldn’t really imagine as they told me the stories of their lives….and I took my son to the same kind of time. He’s never known life without computers, cell phones, and the many other modern technologies. He knows how to do things with electronics that I didn’t learn until I was grown.

The stories of our lives hold as much interest for our children as do the stories written in the pages of books. When my oldest was little I discovered a good amount of the history of my ancestors…enough to know who they were and where they came from all the way back to 1700. Because I knew that when my daughter would ask for a story I would tell her the story of our family. She loved it and asked me to tell her that story over and over. So much so that I eventually wrote it down in a way that she could understand and had it bound into a book that she could hold and read for herself. She spent many hours reading that book.

Within its pages was 11 generations of our family’s stories. They were short, giving only basic details…in most cases because basic details were all I knew...but she didn’t care. She was simply captivated and amazed by what wasn’t even a well written story. I didn’t need to write it in the perfect style required by publishers, I didn’t need to meet the expectations of my reader, because my targeted audience was so fascinated with the story I was writing that she willingly overlooked the bad writing.

Our children are fascinated by our lives. They watch the story of our lives unfold before them whether we realize it or not. I’ve heard many times that we shouldn’t tell our children to live one way while we’re in the midst of living another way, that actions speak louder than words, that they’ll follow what they see us doing and not what they hear us saying.

We are living out before them a story that they read every single day. It is a story that is more powerful than any they will ever read in a book, it is a story that will shape and mold who they are, it is a story they will remember long after we are no longer with them.

They may or may not choose to emulate the story they watch us live but it is a story that shapes their ideas and personalities nonetheless.

It’s said that girls base their ideas of how a man should treat them based on how they watch their dad treat their mother. Those are the expectations that our daughters will take with them into their future and into their marriages. They will get those expectations from the pages of the story their parents live out before them.

Our son’s will learn how to treat women, how to treat their future wives and children, based off how they see their dad treat their mother and siblings.

Years ago we had neighbors where the husband was abusive toward his wife. This couple had four children, two girls and two boys. When we met them their children ranged in age from about 4 to about 10. Their oldest daughter used to ride her bike up and down the road a good deal of the time she was home. She began to stop in front of our house and just watch us. She didn’t seem to want to come into the yard, didn’t speak to us at first. She just sat and watched us as we came and went. We would speak to her but in the beginning she said little more than hi to us. In time she came into the yard. It wasn’t long after that before she was a regular in our home. She spent the night, she went to town with us, she went to theme parks with us. Most nights she ate dinner with us.

Her younger sister would come with her from time to time but this little girl came pretty much every day and she stayed all day. It took a while before we understood what was happening. Home wasn’t a safe place for her and so she found somewhere that was safe. In time her mother admitted what was going on at home, told us of how her husband beat her on a regular basis.

This little girl watched the story of her parents being unfolded before her and it was, for her, a story of fear and anger. From the road she would sit and watch our family, hardly speaking to us, she watched our story and eventually chose to become a part of it...so much so that it was almost as if she was one of our own.

This little girl was the oldest of the four children in her family. Her sister would sometimes come to our house and in time her brothers did too. This little girl seemed to seek the kind of family we had, the kind of life that we had. She would play baby dolls for hours, she played with our infant daughter as if she was her baby. Her sister, when she came, had no interest in playing, instead she wanted to go through everything, she pulled all the books off the bookshelf saying that she wanted to organize it but never did anything more than make a huge mess before leaving, she emptied toy boxes for the same reason and never did anything more than leave the mess behind.

In those two girls was such a difference in what they were seeking, in how they were dealing with the stress of what the story in their home was. One craved not just the normal but nurturing, the other created chaos.

And the boys…they had learned at their daddy’s knee. They were mean and aggressive to the girls. Expressions often rested on their little faces that should never have been there. Even though they were younger than their sisters it was clear to see that their opinions of their sisters mirrored their dad’s attitudes toward their mother. And it wasn’t just their sisters that received this treatment. Our girls received it, the other girls in the neighborhood received it. I received it. The boys kept it in check with me and other teenage and adult females…they were only 4 and 6 at the time…but it was unleashed toward younger girls.

These children had been affected…influenced…by the story they saw being written between their parents.

They aren’t the only children that I have seen this effect in. They aren’t the only children that sought the safety of our home when theirs wasn’t a safe or good place to be. I have a sister that is much younger than I am. So much so that she was in her mid-teen years when I was raising children. She’s so much younger than I am that she’s closer to my oldest child’s age than my own. This sister spent a good deal of time in our home, even living with us. I was more of a second mother to her than a sister. When she was about 16 she had a boyfriend that loved to come to our house. He would come to see her and he would stay all day or as long as we would let him…there were days he had to be told that it was late and we needed to go to bed. Each time he left he did so reluctantly.

In time he admitted to us that his mother and sister were both alcoholics and that there was rarely any food in his house. He admitted to living on crackers and only had them because he bought them himself and kept them hidden so he’d have them.

In all his time at our house he found his place among us. He became something of a big brother to the children, he helped with things around the house the best way he could.

Eventually he and my sister split up. Long after the end of their relationship we saw this boy in town and he admitted to driving past our house on a regular basis just to see it and know that we were still there.

This teenage boy was a product of the story that his mother, his only parent, and his sister wrote for him. Tragically, not long after he told us how he would drive by just to see our house and maybe catch a glimpse of us, he was killed in a car accident. The accident happened about a year after he and my sister split up. The cause of the accident was his own choices. He was driving drunk, crossed the line and hit a diesel head on.

That boy left a mark on my life as I left one on his. His home life was such that he sought the security, the love, the normalness of our home long after he no longer visited us. When I learned of his death I was shocked. Not so much because it happened but because I remembered having him in our home, remembered the impact we had on his life. For a little while he watched a different story unfold and it was one he longed for until the night he died.

I’ve thought many times of that boy. Thought of how he missed something vital in his life to the point that when he found it in our home he longed for it. I’ve thought of how that boy, so close to being a man, knew that kind of life only for the short time he was at our home.

Now as I think of him, as I think of the choices he made that cost him his life. I see it from two sides…the earthly and the spiritual. I can look at that boy’s life through the faith I hold and know that his time on earth had come to an end, his choices were only the method the Lord used to end his days on earth. He had fulfilled the purpose the Lord had for him. His days had reached their end.

 But I can see it from the earthly also…I can see how the life his family lived affected him. I can see how their choices taught him to live in a way that resulted in the final choices he made that last night of his life. I can see how the story his family lived out before him set the foundation for what he became not only that last night but also during the time he was seeking something from us that he wasn’t getting at home. I can see how the story of his life, how the story he saw written before him on a daily basis played a major role in setting the foundation for the choices he wound up making. This was the life he was placed in, it was where the Lord put him. The story his family lived out before him set the tone for his short life.

And he watched the story from the day he was born.

They say the first three years of a child’s life are their formative years. Ideas and personality will be settled in them in those first years that will last the rest of their life. As a mother I have watched my children grow through those formative years. ‘They’ may be right about those first three years but all of childhood is formative years. They are little sponges that observe and learn based on what they see and experience. They watch the story of their parent’s life and follow the path they see set out before them.

I’m not saying that if real Christian parents live out Scripture before them that those children will be saved because they saw it. Only the Lord can save them and he will do so or not according to His will. Even the story that our children see before them are used for the Lord’s purposes…whatever they may be.

I don’t know why it was that for a while we were the safe place for our neighbor’s daughter. I don’t know what purpose there was in that. Was she in our lives so she could be an influence to us or so we could influence her? I’ll never know.

I don’t know why my sister’s boyfriend not only passed through our life but became so attached to us. Was it for his good, to help in the purpose of his life, or was it for ours? Was he there to teach us something or were we there to help him in the purpose that was soon to be fulfilled in his life? I’ll never know.

All I know is that, as I look back on the lives of those two young people who found security and love within the walls of our home, they were there for a reason. For a time they were placed in our life. And then they were taken out of our life. Our time in each others stories had come to an end. One chapter ended and a new one began. But for that time we were written into the story of each other’s lives. And the impact we made on each other was long lasting.

Our children watch our story unfold and get lived out the same way those two children watched their parents stories. Our children are effected by the way we live our life, by the things we do, by the things we believe, by the things we talk about, by how we interact with them.

As our children begin stories of their own, when they are still major characters in the daily life of our own story, they will take with them the memories and influence of the story we lived out before them. No matter how they eventually live out their own story they will always carry ours with them.

What story are we writing on the hearts, minds, and lives of our children?