When I'm Only A Human in His Eyes

This is me and Tadpole on Mother's Day this past year:

Tadpole and Mommy rocking stripes and anchors.

 Isn't he cute? (and yes, I'm going to be one of those types that refers to him by a codename, because the poor kid is already losing a ton of privacy at my doing) Tadpole's awesome.  He's truly a blessing to Paul and me and we're incredibly grateful that we get to be his parents.  All sorts of new things come along with parenthood as we are learning.

This past week at church the sermon dealt with parenting. So that's been on my mind.  So has the idea of failure.  I've been thinking about failure a lot because I have a very strong fear of it, and it often hinders me from attempting new things (but that's a whole other story for a whole other day). And I was rolling around these two ideas in my head, they collided in one rather sad truth -- one day I will fail my son.

It isn't a matter of if, it's a matter of when, because a day will come when I will mess up and he'll be able to call me out on it.  As of right now, I'm able to get away with a bit because he frankly doesn't know any better, nor does he have the communication skills required to convey any understanding of how I might be letting him down... well, that's not entirely true, he sure let me know that one time when I took off a little bit of finger tip while trying to clip his nails.

(*not Tadpole, but one of the many things I chuckle at on a website I often waste time on)

And while there is a lot of joking in our home of Mommy-Fails and Daddy-Fails as we trial and error some things, those are the things that make me question my ability to parent.

We can all remember back to when we were young and our own parents went from infallible pillars to humans who mess up.  For me, it was when I was about 9 and my parents informed my brother and I of their divorce.  Looking back, that's when I began to realize that my parents weren't perfect (still aren't) and that try as they might, they are simply humans who sometimes make terrible decisions, can use poor judgement, or just be downright foolish. I'm capable of all those things as well.

So knowing that I'm not perfect, I began to wonder what will it be, that will someday show Tadpole, that I too am simply a human. 

Will there be a moment where I mismanage my emotions and yell at him in anger? 
Will I make a decision that leads down a more troublesome path than necessary?
Could there be habits or behaviors that I unintentionally foster in him that are not favorable?

I'm not sure.  Heck, it could be something as simple as me having to parallel park one day and him realizing it shouldn't take four tries only to end up 18 inches away from the curb.  I do know, however, that there is some truth behind the Boy Scout motto of "always be prepared" in that, sometimes it's good to plan for a worst-case scenario:

(umm, seriously, why did no one get me this book?)

Those three questions above reflect three of the more serious ways I fear I may someday fail as a parent. Joking aside from other worst-case parenting scenarios like what to do when there are no more clean diapers, I think it's good to think out what would I do in those moments because, having a rough outline of what might happen helps when you may actually face that situation (ask me some time about the sovereignty in play when I had my Tommy Boy incident).

I won't delve into each of those specific topics at this time, but I will say one thing that will help me deal with future parenting fails is by establishing a home that relies on and reflects grace.  My hope is that we as parents will talk and share, openly and honestly, about what is important and even more so, we will demonstrate it by how we act. And grace is by far is greatest gift we have been blessed with (yes, even more so than our handsome little fellow).  I hope that when Tadpole sees me mess up, after he calls me out on in, he will extend grace to me because he's seen and experienced grace himself.

Renaissance (once more with feeling)

Hello, internet world.  I have returned yet again to the blogosphere because, let's face it, I function better when I can thought spew on occasion.  Otherwise it all bottles up and then crazy meltdowns occur.  I'm not going to do any sort of retrospective and wax nostalgic about what's been keeping me so darn occupied these past few years as I figure over the course of regularly writing, things will eventually make sense.

So I'll keep this post brief and then write one additional post today that is some what focused (and spoiler, does fill in one big answer as to what's been occupying my time).

Anyway, it feels good to be typing something more than 140 characters.