On a recent trip to the Seattle Art Museum, our eight-year-old grew restless. One can only look at so many paintings of segmented, shimmering lemon wedges, her posture said clearly—only so many flat-featured depictions of Jesus and Mary. But her mouth said, more than a few times in that otherwise quiet museum, “I’m ready to go.”
So I whisked her into the Porcelain Room, where the walls are lined with shallow glass cases, each lit and filled from floor to ceiling with delicate china—whole tea sets, figurines from around the world, and dishes whose purpose I couldn’t discern without a guide. The effect of walking into that room is startling; it resets even the grumbliest museum-goer, at least for a second. But with my hands on her shoulders I walked her to the center of the room and stopped.
Then I whispered, “Look up.”
And we both did, at the same time. Above us was a painting of the heavens, with those tumultuous angelic clouds—a flurry of wings, some stern-faced figures gazing determinedly at something we couldn’t see, clasping staffs or stringed instruments, giving us for a second a view of something much higher than even the Porcelain Room could offer.
“Wow,” my daughter whispered.
When she was ready to lower her gaze again, we went browsing about the tea sets, squinting at the wee scenes hand-painted on the sides of cups and tea pots. But then, spotting one of her big sisters, she broke from my side, grabbed her sister by the elbows, and pushed her into the center of the room.
And then she whispered, “Look up.”
Later, when I told my husband about this, about our daughters gazing upward together and marveling, he laughed and said, “So that’s what that was about.”
What what was about? I wondered.
“When I got to that room,” he said, laughing, “she did the same thing to me.”
One of my favorite parts of being a parent is watching my daughters discover new things; one of my other favorite parts is watching them share those new things with others, whether they’re loaning a beloved book to a friend or commandeering the car stereo in order to introduce a new song to the rest of us. From the time my eldest daughter was a toddler marveling at the neighbor’s dog and every airplane overhead, I loved those moments when I could point her toward something new and wonderful and watch her examine it, taking it in and learning its name.
But now as my girls get older I find something else new and wonderful underway. “Listen to this,” my thirteen-year-old says, drawing me toward the piano to hear the new melody she’s been practicing. “You have to read this,” my sixteen-year-old says, brooking no discussion as she presses the book she just finished into my hands. “Come look!” my ten-year-old says, drawing me out the back door toward the strawberry plants, where the first few hang ripe and red all the way through. Or my eight-year-old beaming as she brings me a snail (which I examine with my hands in my pockets—just in case she should, in her delight, try to hand it to me). “You’re going to love him,” she says.
And you know what? They’re (almost) always right. When they come toward me with that kind of enthusiasm, I find that I want to love whatever it is they’re drawing me toward, whether snails, strawberries, or songs. I want to stand there beside them with my eyes closed, waiting—and then I want to look up and linger.
Thinking about the way my daughter kept passing this beautiful thing on (and on), I can’t help but connect it to the bigger work of parenting. Every day I’m so busy talking and teaching, thinking and planning, and hoping that our girls will grow up to love the Lord and to love others well. But parenting older kids feels murky most days. I worry all the time: am I so busy teaching them practical skills—and trying to make it across the tightrope of each over-full day without falling—that I’m not available for them in the ways they truly need? Do I worry so much that I’ll forget to give them something they’ll need that I forget to point them toward the Lord who knows what they’ll need—and who will make sure they have it?
Am I so preoccupied with the thorns and thistles of life that I allow them to crowd out the good growth of the gospel in our family?
Most days, I honestly don’t know—we are too close to it; we can’t see growth happen when we’re in the midst of it; we can’t tell yet what kind of fruit we’ll produce. At this stage, the magnitude of the task is becoming more clear—as is how little we can actually control. I have to trust that I, too, am in the hands of a God who will give me what I need when I need it. And sometimes, what I need is to stand beside my daughters and take in something beautiful with them: the butter-yellow whorl of a snail’s shell, that climbing bass line in a song’s bridge, those clouds of glory. Sometimes I need to stop beside them and remember—not hoping that God will come through for them, but remembering all he has already done.
These moments remind me of what it is we’re really doing as parents: again and again, we stop and say not “Look ahead toward adulthood” but “Look up!” Lift your eyes above the horizon; remember how small you are and how big creation is; find rest and hope in the One who is over and in and through all things. That is what I hope we say daily, with our words and posture—look up.
May these moments of practice—of sharing in the good things of God’s creation together—point us toward those greater, more lasting moments when our whole family will stand together, all of us gathered together within the clouds of glory.
All of us looking up.
This post first appeared on https://thearosenburg.substack.com/
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