a perfect parent

spoilers ahead: the perfect parent I’ve written about is not me.

I love these pull-back-the-curtain moments that God gives to us sometimes. Usually after a hard moment. Often it’s while I’m driving, often while listening to music. 

We were driving to the airport to watch the planes come and go, as is our custom in the late afternoon, listening to Christy Nockels’ lullaby album.

The songs are supposed to be for him. But I benefit from listening to them about 500x more than he does, I think.

“You have what it takes...not by power, not by might, but the Spirit of God, who’s living inside...you have what it takes”, she sings.

Right. I do have what it takes, and what I have and what it takes have all been given to me. Probably the reason why I forgot — because what it takes to do this, to raise a toddler (for the first time) in the middle of (my first ever) global pandemic when I’m also questioning what the purpose and direction of my own life is meant to be...it’s a lot. More than I can wrap my mind around. And what it requires of me is more than I could ever generate on my own. 

But. God.

Nevertheless I am so tired of being so needed and so needy and also somehow lonely all the time. It struck me the other week that one of the things I hate about this season is that I constantly feel like a narcissist. I feel like I’m only ever aware of my needs and can only focus on getting those met, and I hate it.

Then another song came on. This one I sing to Arie before he goes to sleep sometimes, and lately he’s been requesting it by name, which I love. I guess because it makes me feel like he likes it, too, and it’s not just me meeting one of my own needs again. And in a moment, I processed why I’d chosen this song to sing to him: because it’s the most beautiful lullaby I have ever heard. And then, the spirit uttered: “I am choosing the most beautiful song I know to sing over you. And I already am to you exactly the parent that you aspire to be to him.”

And he is. And he does it perfectly. And he supplies me with the grace I need to do even a measure of it all.

I just sobbed, and let myself be held, because that’s what my perfect parent knew I needed in that moment. The loneliness washed away, and I felt like I was wrapped in the lovingest arms in all the world.

This is an excerpt from an archive, written on September 25, 2020.