Oh, the optimism!
My children and I were very excited about our first attempt at a vegetable garden. How hard could it be? To my husband’s dismay, we dug out almost the entire lawn behind the swimming pool. We planted eight different vegetables and believed that everything would flourish. How self-sufficient we would be! In my mind I could already see myself smugly passing the expensive grocery store around the corner.
We started planting at exactly the right time of year. Fertilizer, water, and sunshine were all aplenty. Each morning we would tiptoe over the dewy lawn to check on our progress. The carrots and onions didn’t surface right away, but most of the other seeds sprouted happily, and the small plants were soon several centimeters high—as green as grass and promising! I took photos of every phase.
Oh, the unexpected!
Shortly after this, nasty cutworms and spiders started attacking. Almost everything stopped growing, and upon closer inspection we discovered that more worms than roots were attached to the spinach seedlings. Despite the row of caper bushes that were supposed to repel them, snails came like pilgrims from faraway lands, leaving shiny trails. By the time I was equipped with sprays, pellets, and powders, only a failed harvest remained. Our nightly snail hunt was a huge adventure for my son, with flashlight and trap in hand, but alas, it was just not effective enough to stem the tide of the slimy prowlers.
When I started asking around (with a sense of shame) whether everyone struggled as much as I did, I got the impression that other vegetable growers did many things differently. Apparently we planted the wrong kind of beans and supported them incorrectly. Apparently the spacing instructions on the back of the seed packets were important! Apparently those onions really had to sprout in seed trays first. Had I done anything right?
Well, there were the record-breaking squashes. I took lots of photographs of the first whoppers as they lay heavily on the kitchen scale, and I bragged shamelessly. I would have Facebooked, Instagrammed, pinned, and tweeted them, but this was before the days of social media. These marrows were the result of perfectly aligned conditions in the soils and the weather—not an accurate reflection of my gardening talents!
Oh, the misfortune!
A few weeks later, an unexpected hailstorm flattened the only surviving white pumpkins, which had been showing signs of creeping all the way around the swimming pool (one is allowed to exaggerate about one’s vegetable garden). My children’s homemade “scared-to-death-crow” lost its shiny Christmas decorations and fluttering ribbons to the hailstorm, and winged pests had no respect for the old mop with the crocodile T-shirt. They finished off what the storm had left.
What can I say? The local grocery store kept us as clients!
Oh, the disillusionment!
The whole business of growing plants is difficult, but growing children is even more difficult. Everything starts out so well, and the baby pictures show so much promise. Before the birth, we read everything we can find about childcare on both spiritual and emotional levels. We establish rules for our household.
The children learn to walk, to talk, and even to pray at the right time. The years pass so quickly, and then, unexpectedly, all kinds of pests and plagues strike. They threaten the fruit of years of parenting. Sometimes we fear permanent damage, as with our hailstorm. Instead of a promising harvest, we reap misunderstanding and rebellion.
Some parents give up when this happens, as I did with the vegetable garden. They resign themselves to the defeat that “it is natural” for kids to go off the rails. Is it? Or is it all our fault?
We’d all love to be natural moms and dads with kids who have great character. Instead, most of us feel unnatural at the task, as I did at gardening, and our kids are the ones who are natural—natural rebels, natural criers, natural sleepers, natural manipulators, natural charmers, or natural escape artists. What are we to do with these natural tendencies—good and bad?
Oh, the starting over!
Doomsayers tell us that we basically can do nothing for our children’s character after their sixth birthday—the window of opportunity has closed. They tell us our kids are shaped forever and will not learn anything new. But this rules out God and all His wonderful grace and power. This underestimates the wonder of second chances. This loses sight of what can happen when a parent gets back into the garden with renewed resolve to shake things up. Of course there is a chance for a new beginning.
Typical kids can become kids of great character when we point them to God’s blueprint for their individual potential, purpose, and passion.
Sometimes our children are anxiously awaiting any sign that we want to improve so that they can lay down their weapons. We may feel like we are opposing forces, but if we can figure out how that happened, we can get back on the same side and miracles can happen in a short amount of time. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, by the grace of God, we could have a harvest that needs no exaggeration? What if we could grow children we can be openly proud of and thankful for—like those squashes of mine? Maybe even I, who can’t keep a fern alive, could shape tender saplings to grow tall and straight. Maybe you could grow a tree that is heavy with fruit! Maybe all our kids can grow into God’s perfect plan for them. I believe it.
Oh, the discovery!
Can we expect to cultivate healthy young trees without understanding how they function? Should we all sit around the tea table like a bunch of old ladies and sigh and say, “Oh, if only the children came with an instruction manual”? I believe they did! And I am referring not only to the Bible. Into every child’s beautifully unique nature, the answers to a million questions are written. Which type of child should be left to cry alone, and which should be cuddled into a smile after tears? How do I motivate the child who never “feels like it”? How should a father get his teenager’s attention when she pretends that he is invisible?
When the questions and their answers are this diverse, and our children find such original ways to mess up, we need more than just Five Steps or Seven Keys to be perfect parents. I have read many “foolproof” parenting books that promise, “Just do as we say, and your family will look like the photo on the back cover of this book in no time.” Father, mother, and children are sitting happily in a little boat on crystal-clear water with drooping willows framing the picture idyllically in green. We want to be like them, so we do exactly as the book tells us to do, but it doesn’t work for us. Are we to blame? Are our children perhaps to blame? Or are the writers of those books to blame? No, no, and no. What’s to blame is the naive assumption that one plan could work for everyone.
This book will help you know which plan is right for you and your child. While not perfect, your child is going to be a natural at stepping into the plan that God gave when He breathed life into him or her. Your journey will be unique. It is guaranteed to be a gardening adventure! May the Lord be present in your “nursery” in full force. May your saplings each reflect the multiple wonders of the Lord and glorify Him through their unique character!
Hettie Brittz