Look Ma, No Car Seat!

In March of 2000, we entered a new stage of life.  We entered the Car Seat stage.  We buckled our sweet new baby girl into her rear-facing infant seat in our 1999 Grand Am and drove her three blocks home from the hospital.

And for the last 19 years, we've been a Car Seat Family.  Yes, we've had rear-facing, convertible, high backed boosters and low boosters in both of our cars.  Our parents had boosters in their cars.  We made driving choices based on which cars had the correct car seats installed, because changing the car seat was an activity to be avoided at all costs (you can read about that here).  We were used to finding crusty french fries in car seat crevices and muttering under our breath about twisted car seat straps.  We were experts at wrestling unruly children into their five-point, often maneuvering around bulky coats (kids were allowed to wear coats in car seats back then!).  More often than we wished, we had to disassemble a seat due to vomit, poop explosions or spilled food.

A few years ago, we removed our final five-point harness car seat (you can read about that here).  And of course, because this is me, I was a bit nostalgic about it.  The end of an era!  But we still had the trusty booster, so don't worry, world!  We still had little kids!

But late this summer, we truly moved on.  We are no longer a Car Seat Family.  Our youngest moved out of her booster (and she was the last of her friends to do so, to hear her tell it!!), and we now no longer have any boosters in any of our cars.  And while the freedom of being able to put any kid in any car at any time is amazing, and something I only dreamed of 15 years ago, it's a little sad too. Having big kids is fabulous - I love it!  But having little kids is also awesome, and the passing of the car seat only reinforces that we are rapidly moving out of that phase of life.

BUT - a girl can have hope.  Someday, all these children will give me grandchildren (hear that, kids?), and I will proudly put a car seat or two into our cars so we can be ready to transport anyone, anywhere, anytime.

Lutheran School Round Up!

A little while ago, I shared a blogpost written by a friend of mine (who was almost my student 20 plus years ago - I missed teaching her by one year!).  She is a Lutheran educator now, and was writing about the benefit of a Lutheran education for her children, and the children in her community.  My husband and I also strongly believe in Lutheran education (after all, we both received our degrees in that very thing!) and the impact they make on not only the children enrolled, but also their families. 

Just after reading her blogpost, I came across a list complied by Lutheran teachers. The answers listed everything the teachers loved about being a Lutheran teacher.  Below, a few of the reasons these teachers love their jobs:

• Sharing Jesus with their students, in every subject, in every aspect of their days
• Praying with their students, for their students, and with their colleagues
• Relationships!  With families, students and church members
• Watching their students witnessing to others and having their own faith strengthened
• Smaller class sizes and more personalized instruction
• Giving the students blessings - at the beginning and end of the school year, and daily as well
• Introducing a student to Jesus for the first time
• Teaching the children of former students
• Witnessing student baptisms
• Being "Jesus with skin on"
• The privilege to shape all parts of the child: physical, emotional, spiritual, intellectual
• Sharing Jesus with their students, all day, every day

As I read the list, almost every other answer was the one I listed first and last - the privilege to share Jesus with their students all day long.  Overwhelmingly, the Lutheran school teachers were overjoyed to be able to pray with their students and to infuse Jesus into every aspect of their days.  

Christian schools (like all schools, Christian or otherwise) are not without struggle.  But at the core of every Lutheran school is the deep desire to share Christ with their students.  We are grateful to belong to a church that strongly supports a Lutheran school, and that church and school has become our family.  The teachers at our school have prayed for, rejoiced with, cried with and laughed with our family over the years.  And these teachers have reinforced daily, hourly, the faith we are teaching our children at home.  Praise God for Lutheran Schools!

Little Kids, Big Kids

18 years ago on September 21, I gave birth to our second child, a boy!  It was just 10 days past the September 11 attacks and the nation had been prominent in our thoughts.  But on September 21st, our thoughts were all about our sweet baby boy and our new family of four.

Fast forward 18 years, and our thoughts are still all about our son (and his brothers and sisters).  Family is the biggest blessing we've been given and sometimes I'm overwhelmed by God's gracious outpouring of gifts to us. With these children we've been gifted, however, comes great responsibility.  It is our sacred task to raise up these children to be godly men and women; to first and foremost love their Savior, knowing everything else will flow from that relationship.

When our oldest kids were little, a dear friend said something to me.  I don't remember the context - perhaps she was lamenting something her (slightly older) children were doing or maybe it was just in response to something I was concerned about with my own children.  She said, "Little kids, little problems.  Big kids, big problems."  As a mom with little kids who had what felt like Super Big Problems sometimes, I was not a fan of this adage.  I got the point -- that the bigger the kids were, the more far-reaching and concerning their issues could be.  But still.  I felt like my problems were plenty large and challenging in the moment.

And I still believe that, as I know my friend did too -- when you have little ones underfoot all the live long day, the struggle is real, and the worries are big.  But as the kids have grown up (I am now the parent of TWO adults!  What on earth!), I definitely resonate with what she said.  While so far, praise God, we haven't had any significant issues with our kids, their problems, struggles, challenges and concerns are bigger.  They are thinking about their future, their possible spouses, their higher education and also stretching and growing in their faith.  And that often causes a lot of angst and questioning.

As I've said before, parenting isn't for wienies.  It's not for the faint of heart.  It's full of second-guessing and late night conversations and night after night on our knees in prayer for our kids.  We're in the thick of it still.  Had someone told us (and people probably did!) how parenting would pull at our heart strings, we wouldn't have had any idea how challenging it would be.  But we also wouldn't have had any idea how beautiful, rewarding and fulfilling it would have been either.

I guess it comes down to what stage you're in in life.  When you have little kids, everything feels monumental. And it is!  Training little people up to be kind and compassionate children is a Big Deal.  And when you have big kids, everything feels monumental.  And it is! Shaping and guiding tweens, teenagers and young adults into contributing members of society takes a lot of patience and stick-to-itiveness (Merriam Webster backed me up that that's a read word!) and it's a Big Deal. 

Each parenting stage, from infancy to teens to young adults and beyond is a weighty task.  What a blessing to know that no matter the size of our problems, God is bigger and He will never leave us to handle them on our own.

Regardless of whether or not they're little kid problems or big kid problems.