Archive for the ‘Family’ Category

1 Oct

Vases of Grace

Posted by Jennifer Clark Tinker in Brokenness, Family. Tagged: , , , , .

Vase of Grace

I blew it. I blew my top with my son. Again.

I don’t mean to do it. I really don’t. I don’t mean to yell at him.

He’s a good kid. A great kid really. He’s smart, funny, and caring. He’s a Lego pro. He does great character voices when reading aloud or playing make-believe. He “gets” God and Jesus and grace better than some people five times his age.

It is not his fault that I yell at him. Even if he does bad stuff, I’m the grown-up–responsible for keeping my own reactions in check.

There’s no good reason to angry-yell at any kid–none that I can think of in the whole wide world. Not a single one. It’s just plain wrong.

Add to that I’m this mom who is passionate about Positive Discipline, making a point to offer loving support, and non-punitive correction. I should know better. I should do better.

When I yell, I know that it is me who is out of control. I know that.

And I want to be quick to tell you that it doesn’t happen very often. Most of the time, we’re all pretty laid back around here. We get along well in my family of three: we cooperate, we talk about anything and everything, and we’re generally really nice people.

I don’t yell all the time. Hardly ever really. It’s almost not even worth bringing up lest you get the wrong idea about me. It’s not that bad…

Except, I saw a headline the other day that if you yell at your child it can cause as much emotional harm as physical abuse. I would never lay a hand on my child. I’ve never even spanked him as discipline. Ever.

But to think that my out-of-control yelling could cause him emotional harm?

Oh, Lord have mercy.

And I see it. Rather, I hear some of the fall-out of the yelling. “I’m the stupidest kid in the world!” is a typical response when I yell at him. His negative self-talk peaks whenever I lose control with my tone of voice.

Two Tuesdays ago, after I yelled I was quick to apologize. And he was quick to forgive saying, “That’s okay mommy. I’m kind-of used to it.”

Oh child. Oh sweet boy.

“You shouldn’t have to be used to that. Mommy is wrong to yell. Just as I want you to talk to mommy in a respectful tone of voice, you can expect the same from me. When I don’t speak to you respectfully, it is wrong.”

I spent the better part of that day feeling really crummy for having yelled, and for him being “kind-of used to it.” And my own negative self-talk dominated my inner-dialog.

But something happened that gave me hope. I can’t remember if it was the same day or the day after that, but I was still beating myself up about the yelling when my son brought me flowers from the yard.

Before I had a chance to come and see the flowers, he put them in glasses of water. But the stems were far too short to reach the bottom of the glasses, so he custom-engineered supports out of some of his Legos to keep the blooms above the water level.

These vases of grace gave me hope. Great hope. Hope that his predominate mode is confidence and kindness, not self-loathing. Hope that I get a second chance to do better. Hope that we can move forward and that he had already moved past the difficult moment on which I had still been dwelling.

It has happened again since I got those vases. But I caught it quicker. And I’m recognizing my triggers–triggers that have nothing to do with him at all. And I’m seeing that some of what triggers my out-of-control behavior are stressors that I can reduce or eliminate. So, with God’s help I’m working on all that.

It is important work, but it is a work in progress. But the vases, those beautiful vases remind me that there is grace, even for me.

27 Sep

I Am From Pathways

Posted by Jennifer Clark Tinker in Family, Inspiration. Tagged: , , , .

I-AM-FROM_800

Today I am linking up with the She Loves Magazine “I Am From” Synchroblog

I am from charging cords, from Legos, and stacks of Bibles.

I am from the clutter with pathways cut through.

I am from the parched grasses, the pecan tree whose long gone limbs I remember as if they were my own.

I’m from The Farming Game and quick wit, from Idella and Lenore.

I’m from creativity and rumination and long, drawn-out discussions.

I’m from preventing fires, and not being the boss of my brother, and wanting them to know we are Christians by our love.

I’m from summers in Massachusetts where I tried to forge pathways through muck.

I’m from Columbus, Ohio and from people whose waterways were first forged by the Mayflower, venison summer sausage and special carrots.

From a husband who saves turtles, a tireless servant of God, long letters tucked away that cut pathways for love to emerge.

13 Sep

Secondary Infertility and Layers of Angst

Posted by Jennifer Clark Tinker in Brokenness, Family. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , .

I wrote on my blog before about my history of infertility and how I lament that I can’t have another child, I lament my broken body. And while that is true, there is more to it than that. I alluded to it a little in that previous post:

Is there still hope that I could technically get the right treatments, eat the right foods and eventually conceive again?

Probably.

See, that probability could be more in reach than I let on. I mean, there are some relatively simple steps with my health that I could take but I am not taking. And partly why I don’t do those things is because there is part of me that doesn’t want more kids.

I wrote once before about my history of depression and anxiety and how that is a factor in why I am reticent about having more kids:

I sunk to rock-bottom depression in my early days post-partum and at some point after having my son the anxiety kicked in…I mentioned before that my history of infertility is the biggest reason why I don’t have more than one kid, but this depression/anxiety stuff factors in pretty prominently too.

So, I’m disappointed yet a little glad that I can’t because I don’t want to anyway because I was such a depressed mess the first time around.

But there is more.

There is the part that I don’t want to tell but somehow I feel like God wants me to work out. There is the plain old reality that I just don’t want to for my own reasons.

I know my great longing is not a secret, because it is all over this blog. I want this blog to be something to serve others, but so often I am absorbed in all my own drama here. So I have already revealed what I really want.

I want to give birth to more speaking and writing.

You can have it all, just not all at once.And I just can’t give birth to that if I am to have another baby. They say you can have it all, just not all at once, and I believe them.

When my son was small, he required so much, so very much of me. From breastfeeding to bed-wetting, the demands were around-the-clock for so many of his younger years. Add into that the hours-on-end of hands-on involvement during the day–I took seriously the caution not to allow screentime until age 3, the advice to not leave a young child unattended even for a moment. So, I spent a lot of time right there with him, shaping his days, playing games, and telling him stories.

I don’t begrudge him any of that.

I just know myself well enough to know that if that was my reality all over again, then I couldn’t do the speaking and writing that I want to do, you know, with grown-ups.

My son is 9 years old now and halfway to college already! And with his advancing years, he is more independent than ever. Now he is reading fluently and can lose himself in a National Geographic while I write a bit. And the older he gets, being a guy and all, the more he wants to spend time with his dad–so that means more time for me to work on preparing for a talk I’m going to give.

My son still needs me, of course. But more of me is freer now than when he was little little. And I like it this way, this me-being-freer way.

So, why do I feel so guilty about wanting what I want and enjoying my freedom?

I mean, all the time, women of “normal” fertility decide to stop making more babies. They could have more, but they don’t. So, why do I, for whom baby-making does not come so easily, feel so guilty for “I don’t want to”?

Maybe it’s not the “I don’t want to” that I feel guilty about so much as the hiding behind the “I can’t” narrative.

Hiding behind “I can’t” has been an excuse to not directly seek God’s will. If I just stick to the “I can’t” script, then I don’t have to know what God wants for my future. If I can’t, I can’t, right? So God can’t possibly expect me to do what I can’t do.

But, what if I stop hiding behind, “I can’t” and just be honest with God about “I don’t want to because there’s other stuff I want to do instead”? What if I invite God into this complexity of emotion, into these layers of angst?

Ah, though, the trouble with that is what if God doesn’t affirm what I think I want to do? What if this whole speaking and writing stuff is just my will, my want?

I wrestle all the time with sorting out my motives. I want to believe that what I want is what God wants. I have an inkling that this other stuff is where God is calling me. I have a pretty clear vision about what that work might entail.

But for me, moving more fully into the speaking and writing entails having that baby-making stuff behind me. And until I stop hiding behind my assertion of “I can’t” and really ask God whether it is okay to not to, then what I actually can’t do is move forward in anything with any degree of certainty.

Lord, I submit this to you. Grant me the courage and confidence to know and move forward in your will. Amen

22 Aug

Talking about Downward Mobility

Posted by Jennifer Clark Tinker in Brokenness, Family. Tagged: , , , .

Today I am guest posting at D.L. Mayfield’s site and I’m so excited to be included among so many brilliant voices in her Downward Mobility series. My post is about how my family’s attempt at the American Dream left us pretty groggy.

Here’s an excerpt:

I grew up in a nice, big house and I’ve always wanted to live in a house like that or even better. I’m a homebody. I like to be at home. I like to invite people into my home. I like to have overnight guests in my home. And the nicer the home, the bigger the home, the better off I felt I would be. So I let my dream of a big, nice home cloud my thinking about the (lack of) reasonability of us getting into the housing market in South Florida.

Want to read more of this story?

>>>Please click to read the rest of my story at D.L. Mayfield’s site<<<

And please be sure to look at the other posts in the Downward Mobility series.

I first got to know D.L. Mayfield with her War Photographer series which just got me thinking ever blessedly much. I am grateful to Sarah Bessey whose tweet about Tara Livesay’s War Photographer guest post first turned my attention to D.L. Mayfield.

3 Jun

“I’ll do it myself!” (How Identifying with this Desire Can Help Kids)

Posted by Jennifer Clark Tinker in Family. Tagged: , , , , , .

Adults and Kids Aren't That Different

“I’ll do it myself!”

It can range anywhere from heart-warming to petrifying to hear children in our care say that. But kids are not alone in this desire to do things on their own or in their own way. Perhaps our identification with these feelings can motivate us to give them more autonomy and responsibility.

We as grown-ups know, all too well, the feeling of wanting to stand on our own, to do things our own way:

  • When supervisors hover just a little too much, we squelch the inclination to tell them to, “BACK OFF!”
  • When acquaintances we’re not too sure about find out we’re having a rough day and offer their time in case we need to talk, we politely decline thinking we’ll work through it on our own.
  • When house guests offer to help in ways that make us uncomfortable, we suggest they leave it to us.

If you can identify with any of these scenarios, then you know what I mean. Maybe you can think of other times in your life when you rebuffed someone’s help (or wished you could).

But what about the times our need to do things ourselves interferes with children’s opportunities to make meaningful contributions to what needs done? Sometimes we inadvertently discourage young workers when we say, “You don’t know my system, I’ll just do it myself.” Our need for order, for things to be done our way (aka the right way), can be in direct conflict with kids’ needs to be involved.

In recent months my husband and I noticed that our son was getting away with doing fewer chores than he had before our move to Texas a year ago. We recognized, after the stress of moving, it was easier, in a way, to take care of things ourselves. But the less our son helped, the the more he whined when he was asked to help and complained when housework didn’t just magically happen.

One of the things that our son had helped with before the move was unloading the dishwasher, so we wanted to get him back to that. And since he was a little older we thought he was ready to begin learning to load the dishwasher as well. So, my husband and I made a pact that from then on we would never load or unload the dishwasher without our son involved.

We braced ourselves for the possibility that getting our son more involved with loading the dishwasher meant that it would not always be done “the right way.” I mean, he didn’t know our system! Then again, even my husband and I each have different systems!

Instead of trying to impose a system on him, we’ve encouraged him to develop his own system. As much as we want it to be done our way, that’s how much he wants to do it his way!

We are finding that as we let him develop his own system, his system is improving. Not only that, but since he started doing more chores, he has, almost entirely, stopped whining and complaining. Plus, he started taking a great deal of pride in his dishwasher-loading gig!

Accessing the feelings we have about wanting to do things our own way, we see how important it is to let our son have that opportunity. Instead of keeping him out of what needs done, we have given him opportunities to serve our family. And by letting him figure out for himself what works, he has become even more fit for the task.

Certainly we all have our reasons for asserting the need to do things ourselves from time to time. But when our need to do things ourselves denies children opportunities to learn and grow, we may want to reconsider imposing our need on the situation. We may even be surprised at what kids can do when we let them at it!

Can you recall a time in your life when you wanted more autonomy than you were given? What did that feel like for you? What can you ask or let the children in your life do that they haven’t tried on their own?

~ ~ ~

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If you enjoyed this post, you might also like these:

Do I Don’t Know?

Stuff You Learn After You Say “I do”

This post was inspired in part by using one of the 52 Positive Discipline Parenting Tools called “Jobs” as a writing prompt. Much of my approach to parenting as been honed by the Positive Discipline books.

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