I have accomplished brokering a peaceful bedtime, after a tense standoff where they resisted with every distraction and device that they could think of. My daughter Shaylee has decided as I tucked her in bed that she needed to pick out her clothes for the next day, or work on homework. Her sister Evanthea has insisted upon another story being read, and Lissandra has developed a thirst that an artesian well would be hard pressed to slake.
As a parent, these are all familiar tactics in the war upon bedtime that children wage. The fighting, the bed-jumping, the run-to-the-bathroom-mom-is-gone dash: routine. I have gotten used to waging a small battle to get the kids to bed.
And the crazy thing is that I don’t mind. In a few years this phase of life will be gone and something else will have taken its place. There will be school activities that take them away in the evening, friends to visit with, and homework to complete. Bible camp will own them for an entire week in the summer. IPods will have to be listened to and texts sent to friends. Movies will be watched in abundance, and school complained about.
The time of helping little hands to tie shoes, write the alphabet, and shyly make friends or watching smiling faces run out of the school at the end of the day: gone. Small victories such as getting across the monkey bars for the first time, climbing a tree, winning Candy land or reading a book: gone.
I know, I sound slightly melodramatic. Because I am a Christian, I fall back on verses from the Bible to help me through tough times in life. The verse that comes to mind when I think of my children growing and going away is Ecclesiastes 3:1-8;
“For everything there is a season,
A time for every activity under heaven.
A time to be born and a time to die.
A time to plant and a time to harvest.
A time to kill and a time to heal.
A time to tear down and a time to build up.
A time to cry and a time to laugh.
A time to grieve and a time to dance.
A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones.
A time to embrace and a time to turn away.
A time to search and a time to quit searching.
A time to keep and a time to throw away.
A time to tear and a time to mend.
A time to be quiet and a time to speak.
A time to love and a time to hate.
A time for war and a time for peace.”
I know that right now is the season to embrace my children and build them up. This time of life is their time to grow and learn under the shelter of their home. The time of raising small children and teenagers will come to an end, but it is not the end: it is a beginning.
If I read a little further in Ecclesiastes 3, to verses 9-13, this is what I discover:
What do people really get for all their hard work? I have seen the burden God has placed on us all. Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end. I concluded there is nothing better than to be happy and enjoy ourselves as long as we can. And people should eat and drink and enjoy the fruits of their labor, for these are gifts from God.
Children are the fruits of our labor. We should enjoy our lives as a parent, and enjoy our children in all of the stages of parenting because that is the way that God intended it. There is joy along with the hard work, and I intend to harvest every drop along the way.
- Crystal Knecht
Crystal recently moved to Fargo with her husband and youngest three children to finish her family education degree at NDSU and is now interning with North Dakota Family Alliance & We Are Sent Movement. Crystal is divorced and remarried, the proud mother of six and one step daughter.