Two P's of Parenting from the Cains: Patience, and Partnership

Jess: Our little baby will be 16 months old on Friday, and I simply can’t believe it. In fact, a few weeks from now marks two years since we found out that our family would be growing. It is amazing how different our life looks since then. I can’t honestly say we have enjoyed every minute, but life is wonderful with James in our lives.

As I wiped pee off the floor this morning, I realized that there is one thing that has been really important during the last two years: PATIENCE. Now, just over a year ago, Wes and I wrote a blog about patience, and our lack thereof. And yet, out of everything that we have done, from reading books to talking to other parents to observing our own situation, having more patience has been the biggest game-changer.

In Evan Almighty, there is a point where God (awesomely portrayed by Morgan Freeman) talks to the main character’s wife about how God goes about answering prayers. He says, “Let me ask you something. If someone prays for patience, you think God gives them patience? Or does he give them the opportunity to be patient? If he prayed for courage, does God give him courage, or does he give him opportunities to be courageous? If someone prayed for the family to be closer, do you think God zaps them with warm fuzzy feelings, or does he give them opportunities to love each other?”

There is so much patience required in being a parent. First, you have to wait nine months for the kid to bother to make an appearance. In that time, you wait to hear a heartbeat, wait to see the baby, wait to discover the baby’s gender, wait for signs of labor, wait, wait, wait. There’s no speeding up the process—babies need time to develop. And even once they’re here, there is literally nothing they can do for themselves for months. You wait for the day they can soothe themselves, sit up alone, feed themselves, sleep through the night, etc.

All of this waiting, all of these opportunities to be patient, are what have created greater patience in me. I can see it in other areas of my life, as well. I’m more patient in traffic, more patient when projects take awhile to get going, more patient in everyday conversations. This is going to be a great asset in my life as a pastor. But the greatest benefits of patience learned through parenting has been having more patience for parenting.

Throughout James’ young life, we have made many changes: liquid to solid diet, sleeping in our room to sleeping in his own room, following James’ schedule to making our own, bottles to cups, three naps to two naps to one nap. Each one of these changes is pretty major for a little guy who hasn’t known anything else his whole life. Each time we make a change, we’ve gone the “slow and steady” route. Introduce a little solid food. Gradually tweak James’ schedule till it becomes our own. And now, we’re working on two slow processes: getting rid of the pacifier and potty training.

By not having expectations that these things will happen overnight, we don’t jar James out of his comfort zone. We take our time so that the new thing seems natural by the time we’ve completely switched to it. Patience is key. James isn’t going to be in “big boy” underwear by tomorrow. But he just might use the potty, and that’s something to celebrate. For James, too, is learning patience. He’s also learning that his parents love him and will walk with him through the challenges in life. And he is teaching us so much along the way.

Wes: Jess, once again, said basically everything that needed to be said. In fact, I loved the way that she ended her part of the post so much that I actually feel bad about writing anything after it. So, if you don’t want to read this part of the post, that’s cool. I would have stopped with Jess’ words as well.

But here’s the deal. I have to write something. In part because I’m one of those people who almost always has something to say and in part (a much larger part) because Jess is expecting me to write my half of this post. This blog is a team effort, and we are partnering in it. If I were to not hold up my end of partnership, it would not be the same. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it would be less of a blog—I already admitted that you could only read Jess’ parts and be perfectly content with life—but it wouldn’t be complete in the way we meant it to be complete.

That’s also what I’ve found to be true with parenting. Jess and I joke on occasion that she parents James and I babysit James, like it’s something I do for short periods of time and then receive some form of payment for services rendered (clothes washed, food prepared, etc…). We’ve both known people who function this way, and in most cases, that works fine for them.

But we’ve worked hard to make sure that our parenting is different—not better, but different, and something that better fits with our understanding of family and philosophy of childrearing.

So when we joke about me babysitting, it’s actually a reminder to both of us of the partnership we have entered when it comes to our son. Both of us see our parenthood as a pairs match—neither of us should have to bear all of the burden of raising James on our own. That’s not how we have set up this game to be played.

That is not at all to say that one cannot do a fantastic job raising kids by his/herself. I will be the first to admit that Jess is the better, more equipped and prepared parent. James would grow up to be a fine young man if she were a single parent, and—in all honesty—I probably cause more damage with this partnership than would be there if I were not in the picture. James already has a bad habit of head-butting people and sticking his tongue out at them, because hey, I think it’s hilarious.

Jess could do this whole parenting thing on her own and shine at it, but that’s not how we have decided to do this whole raising kids thing. It’s a partnership, and one we each have to actively be a part of if we want to see it work.

Luckily, I’m not as forgetful with James as I am with posting our blogs on a regular basis!

So here’s just a little glimpse into our process and two things that we have found to be vitally important in how we raise our son. This is not meant to be instructive—not that it couldn’t do that—but is instead meant to show you a little more of who we are and what has rang true for our lives, this past year especially.

That’s all for now. You stay classy, World Wide Web.

wes and jess

Lent 2014

Jess: We are officially in the season of Lent, and Wes and I are doing a smattering of Lenten disciplines this year. The whole purpose of these practices is to remove obstacles that get in the way of your relationship with God, with keeping faith and the Almighty at the center of your life. Over the years, we have both "given up" a variety of things: junk food, TV, Facebook, etc. 

This year, we had a long discussion about what would be good to give up for the season of Lent, and we came up with...nothing. We talked about giving up Facebook, which is not a bad idea, but we have too many people who keep in contact through that method. Instead, I chose to move the FB app on my phone out of the way so that I'm not automatically hitting it when I turn on my phone. I think more carefully about whether I'm getting on FB because I have something important to do there, or because I'm too lazy to think of something better to do with my time. 

I stopped giving up certain kinds of food a few years ago after I lost five pounds over Lent. I don't want the underlying purpose of any Lenten discipline to be losing weight or some other outcome that's better for me in that way. As a side benefit, losing weight was fine, but going into Lent knowing that that would probably happen wouldn't work the same. Plus, Wes and I are both trying to be healthier overall, so we've been making changes along the way. 

While I tossed out the idea of giving up TV, Wes pointed out that we don't even watch TV every day anymore. We have 4 or 5 half hour shows that we watch when they're new, plus we have a show we're watching on Netflix. For the most part, we watch less than an hour of TV per day. Some days it's none, and some days we veg, but an hour or less is the norm. We don't let James watch TV, so our time for doing so is limited to his sleep times, and we generally would rather read or play a game at this point in our lives. This didn't seem like a sacrifice that would really change our lives in any significant way, and it certainly wouldn't lead us closer to God, it would just lead us to read or play games more often. 

So this year we settled on simplification and re-focusing our lives, which is the overall goal of Lent. We are supposed to take this time to examine ourselves and our lives, and see where they are going astray from God's plan for us. To that end, we are taking on two Lenten disciplines: 1) 40 bags in 40 days, which involves going through our house, our cars, and probably our computers/phones to throw out/give away what we don't need or use. 2) Reading through and doing activities from Adam Hamilton's Love to Stay, with the purpose of taking time to focus on our marriage and God each week and day of the season. I'm looking forward to both!

Wes: Basically, what Jess said.

Also, I’m trying a couple of new things during this Lenten season that should be fun. One of my good friends, Jon Lys, has agreed to do a Facetime book study with me. We’re going to be reading through Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ethics, the book he began to write and never finished while staying as a permanent resident in a Nazi death camp. He was executed before he could finish it. I’m excited to read through this with Jon, and excited to dive once again into one of my favorite theologian/pastor’s works.

The second thing that I’m going to try to do—we’ll see how successful it is—it to blog on a daily basis on either this blog or my personal one, The Flip-Flop Prophet. I’ve gotten way out of habit, and it’s actually something I like to do, so I’m hoping this can be a good encouragement for me. Between the decluttering, Love to Stay, and Ethics—as well as my weekly storytelling, sermon writing, etc…—I should have plenty to write about.

So what are y’all doing for Lent? Let us know, so we can encourage you in your endeavors.