To the New Parent

Our church is booming with new life. Pregnancy announcements, baby showers, meal trains, the tiny cries of newborns in all of the rows. Just this past Sunday, the telltale signs of parenthood were everywhere. Parents bouncing their newborn on their hip while chasing a toddler, a few moms who walk the nervous pace between the auditorium doors and the nursery doors, waiting to hear if there’s a cry, a dad walking the hallway with a curious 6-month-old overlooking his shoulder. But there’s nothing like that look on the face of a new mother who has just handed her newborn over to the nursery volunteer for the first time. The unease, the guilt, the exhaustion. I know it well because I’ve been there and wondered if I could go take a nap instead of listening to the sermon.

So if I could write a note to those new parents who walk in and out of Sunday services, here’s what I would say.

Well, hi. 

What a beautiful joy. You made it here to the wondrous world of being a parent. Heads up: None of us really know what we’re doing. Parenthood, as I’m sure you’ve heard, has no how-to book. We’re all winging it to a certain degree. Most of us hope we’re doing right by them. That in 5, 10, 20 years we’ll find out that the worst moments weren’t as bad as they could’ve been. 

What a gift you have in your hands and really, the best is still ahead of you. There’s no “Just wait until…” God’s grace will equip you for each new season, even if his grace simply equips you to fall to your knees.

You will quickly learn, if you haven’t already, what it’s like to love someone so much it literally makes your heart feel like it could shatter into a million pieces. It’s frightening sometimes. You will long for a moment of rest but miss them while they sleep. You will wait for a free moment to not worry about them but then check to see if they’re breathing every 30 minutes. (A mirror under their nose if you’re looking for a neurotic pro-tip.) You will know intimately every smile, noise, cry, and laugh. You’ll know the difference between cries. (And trust me, there’s a difference.)

And you will know that parenting is incredibly hard. It’s hard on your body, your mind, your marriage, your routine, your schedule, your work, your everything. As much as everyone tells you to enjoy these moments, savor these days, the days are long but the years are short, and rock those babies because babies don’t keep, I’m also here to tell you this —

It’s ok to say it’s hard. 

You’re not a bad parent for feeling like you’re going to lose your mind at 3 am if you don’t get some sleep. You’re not a failure for crying while you’re breastfeeding, for missing “regular life,” for wishing your baby would just let you sit and breathe for a little bit. 

It’s ok to not know when you want to have sex again. It’s ok to just want a shower and silence. It’s ok to want a nap and also want to return to normalcy and see other adults.

Not long after my second was born, there was a day when I called my husband at work in tears. “I haven’t done any dishes. I haven’t cleaned anything. No laundry. The house is a mess. I’m losing my mind. He won’t let me leave him. He just wants to nurse and for me to hold him and I think I’m going to lose my mind.”

My husband, the ever-present sage of wisdom in my life reminded me of this: “This is your job right now: be with him. Feed him, hold him, take care of him. Nothing else is your job right now. Just be with him. I don’t expect anything else from you.”

Burden lifted. Crisis averted. I needed the reminder that I couldn’t do it all and that was ok. Remind yourself of this. 

It’s ok to not know how you’re going to do it. It’s ok that you don’t love it all the time. It’s ok that you want some space and sanity and sleep.

Even more so, tell someone. Tell your spouse, your mom, your friend. Tell another mom who has had kids because she’ll know. She’ll nod and probably not say much else because she knows that advice isn’t always the need. Sometimes you just need someone to say “I get it. That’s normal.” Tell another dad because he’ll get it. He’ll know what it feels like to watch your wife change, suffer, struggle, cry, and not know how to help her because you yourself are exhausted and worn out. 

Remember that Jesus showed up in this world as a baby. He valued infancy and the value of their lives and humanity so much that he lived part of his God-man life as a dependent newborn, as an energetic toddler. He didn’t bypass those days and show up as a 10-year-old.

These are not wasted years. These are not throw-away days. Your baby is not part-human, part-valuable. Contribution to society doesn’t equal value so you get to model the love built into the Gospel to them right now. Love doesn’t demand performance. Grace doesn’t require best behavior. Sustaining a life doesn’t require them to give back. Look at that. The Gospel modeling itself right there in your arms.

So here’s your job — love that kid. Love them by being there. Love them by taking care of yourself too. Love them by taking naps and slowing down. Love them by knowing when you can’t do it all. Love them by asking for help. Love them by taking a deep breath in the shower when you’re finally alone. Love them by going out on dates and leaving them with a babysitter. Love them by paying attention — to them and yourself.

It’s ok to say it’s hard. From all of us parents to all of you, we see you. You’ve got this. Oh, and there’s probably spit-up on your shoulder. Just a heads up.

Some Thoughts on Parenting and God's Mercy

“Can I be honest?” she turned in the front passenger seat to face me. Her vanilla chai swirled in a cup and she smirked a little. “I honestly don’t know if it’s ok for a daughter to even say this to her mother…”

“Whatever you need to say, I can take it,” I tell her. Surely whatever she’s about to say won’t be any more cutting than the words I’ve said to myself in my own head. 

“I’m...disappointed in you,” she half-smiles, filled with the awkwardness and discomfort of a child and a young woman who knows that she’s about to speak truth to her own mother. She twists her straw in the chai again before speaking. It squeaks against the plastic, filling the silence of the car. “You should’ve known better.” 

--

I sat at the table the other night and recounted my story again to a friend. All of the messy bits and pieces. Some things I haven’t thought about in years. Other parts that feel as raw and real as a few weeks ago. This has become a normal practice for me. I do what I can to not hide anything. The amazingness of the Gospel is only shown to be more beautiful by the contrast of the wretches it saves like me.

Yet, even still, there are parts of my story that are not fully mine. They also belong to my daughter. This past fall I shared my story very openly on a few podcasts (which I’ll link below) and we realized that maybe it was time for her to know what is mine to own. So one autumn evening, she and I took a meandering drive into the city, stopped for drinks at a coffee shop, and then I took the long way home so we could listen to the episodes together. Nevermind the awkwardness of listening to my own recorded voice. This was my own recorded voice recounting major missteps in my past as she held a notebook open on her lap. I had told her she could ask anything. She could be mad about anything. She could be sad about anything. There was nothing she couldn’t ask. She scribbled away while we listened. Pages worth of notes and questions. Farmlands stretched and the night settled on the October landscape while I turned on to whatever road I could to make our way back home. How fitting, I thought. The wandering path that eventually leads home. 

By the time we pulled into our driveway and parked under the light of the big red barn, she was ready to start talking. Good questions. Real ones. Clarifying ones. Questions that required humility on my end and some that cleared some things up for her.

Years ago, this story was spinning in the hands of agents and publishers. Once upon a time, it was a full-blown book proposal. Video and all. My agent at the time had shopped it and for a myriad of reasons, it never took flight.

“It’s too sad,” one publisher said. 

“We’ve already filled our slot for a story like this,” another said. 

“You need a bigger platform,” my then-agent suggested. 

And then my now-husband asked me on a date. On a warm summer night, we went from a four-year friendship to more and a few months later, on a snowy hillside in Vermont, he asked me to marry him. Suddenly the notion of writing a book about my mess and former marriage and repentance seemed...less than ideal. So I tabled it. (Or, I shot it in the head. Time will tell.) The timing was wrong. I wasn’t ready. God said no. All of the reasons are mostly irrelevant because this past fall, while sitting in the front seat of my car, I realized how immensely grateful I was that there isn’t a book floating around out there with this story that she hadn’t heard. This story is also partly her story. 

Maybe the concept will someday land on some publisher’s desk again. Maybe not. That’s not really the point. The point is that a story is never really finished, is it? And the perceived failure of a project which I thought would cement my career was really just the mercy and kindness of God to keep me from blabbering on too much, too soon. God gave me failure in a project to protect me from failure in my relationships. This is a greater gift. This is a kinder provision.

He knew I’d need the sanctity of a car ride with my 11-year-old. He knew she’d need the space to process and ask questions. He knew she’d be disappointed and that we’d have to do some relational work to let him heal that. A publishing deal wouldn’t be the answer. Grace and time would be.

So all this to say, humility is underrated, God’s timing is reliable, and our kids don’t need us to be perfect. God is never done restoring and redeeming. It might take years. It might not be over when you think it is. Who knows – I may have more long car rides in my future. I may have more failed book deals that leave me scratching my head. I may have more hidden provisions of God. This is the meandering path that leads us home by his grace. Somehow all of those twists and turns lead us exactly where he wants to be.

—

Episode 84 | Kindled with Haley Williams | An Affair Redeemed

By Faith with Christine Hoover | What Repentance Looks Like After Adultery

In the Bleak Midwinter

It’s a new year. 

At 12:53 am, we are driving the dark roads home after celebrating with friends. The last remains of Christmas still swing from most front porches, shining out from living room windows, twinkling on the snow that must have fallen while we drank champagne and kissed our children’s faces. But now the world is dark and quiet as the road curves through old farmland and dusted white pine lanes. Christmas is just an echoing, fading refrain now, washing out into the hills and horizon. Like a familiar hum of "Auld Lang Syne,” we all know how to do this transition from one year to the next, and all of creation steadies on in the normal rhythms. And I? I look eagerly for home. I look for our back porch, twinkle lights hanging loosely, albeit some of them burned out. The one kitchen light on the countertop. The icy puddle splashes as we pull down our drive as tall pine dances slowly in the post-midnight wind. We pull our weary bodies out of the warm car and slowly make our way toward the house. Heavy footsteps through mud, arms full of food we didn’t eat, tired children complaining, footprints in the snow all the way to that warm glow of the back porch, the warm kitchen, the place where we can rest our heads on pillows and under downy blankets.

And something about all of this reminds me of the gospel. Of this new year. Of where I fit in all of it. Because so often this world feels like a dark, ancient landscape. It feels a lot like a winter where Christmas is just an echo and what remains dangles lazily from porches or old street lamps. Forgotten words to an old song that stirs nostalgia in us but we’re not quite sure what for. Where we remember that once there was a song, but now we only know what it maybe used to sound like but can’t quite hum the tune the same way as we used to. A new year on a dark landscape where we stumble in the dark and feign our way toward what we think is enlightenment and progress but really is just another hillside of snow. Here in the dark winter, everyone is fumbling for light. Everyone needs a place to lay their head. Everyone longs to come home. And yet we fill our wandering days with emptiness and are no closer to the place our hearts know we are longing for. Culture rolls on with the same brokenness, the same wheel ruts, the same bare trees, and we are no closer to our goal. There is no new thought, idea, or revelation that illuminates this new year, this land, these old roads that we know so well.

None like the one of Christ, the giver of light, the one who still echoes on.

How much we need that light from the porch calling us home. How much we need the lights of what is good and true telling us “This is where you lay your head.” 

As we step into our house, I looked back once more at the wall of woods that stands guard at the edge of our field. I wondered what would it be like to be a weary traveler stomping through the dark? What would hope look like? Would it look like someone saying that the darkness is where we live? That the mud and the cold and the raw edges of a dying creation are where we rest?

No, most certainly not.

For the weary traveler, the back porch with our lights shining over our coats and mittens, the kitchen countertop lamp, the table set with cookies and chips and the celebration of Christmas still dripping on the edges of all we do – this would be a more welcoming sight. 

So this year, this is all I aim to do in my writing. I do not wish to be enlightened or to have found a way with the words of the world so much that I begin to gain night vision and forget about home. I’m just a weary traveler. I’m longing for the warmth of where we all rest our heads. I’m eager for the celebration to last more than a week, but rather infinite millennia. I’m ready to turn my songs, stories, words, and home into a place where kindling is thrown onto the already burning flame of joy and hope in Christ. That somehow through what I write, as the road turns and the edges of a new year fade into the horizon, I would find my way back to where I rest.

I am no great thinker or philosopher. I am no intellectual who knows the twists and turns of every issue, every topic, every headline. But I do know that I carry the light. So I’ll do my best to light it brighter, bid you come and warm yourself by the fire, and tell you where I found it in the midst of this bleak midwinter.