Parenting: Keeping a Tender Heart
On hearing the news, tending young hearts and making space for Love.
By Sarah Styles Bessey | Twitter: @emergingmummy
I have a bit of a thing about the radio when the tinies are in the car: I don’t listen to it. It’s not because of illicit songs or suggestive lyrics or raunchy DJs (although those are all factors); rather it’s because of the news.
I am overly attached to CBC Radio 1 and I have been a news junkie for most of my life. But it’s an indulgence for when the tinies aren’t in my car because the truth is, the news–particularly anything involving hurt or abandoned children–is a bit much sometimes for small ears without any armour or attitude of “been there, done that, heard it all before” like the rest of us.
Bad news
But recently when we got into the car, the radio was on a low volume so I didn’t notice it was on CBC at first. The news was just starting. Sure enough, the very first story was about a poor newborn baby that was discovered in a dumpster, alive but covered in garbage, in Calgary and now on to coverage of a local pedophile arrested in Richmond …. I immediately registered that we were listening to the news and–please, please, please–all I can hope is the tinies hadn’t been listening.
No luck.
My four-year-old burst into tears in the back seat, devastated. She kept saying things like: “Why would anyone put a baby in the garbage? Did the mumma lose her baby? Maybe she accidentally threw him out in the garbage? Babies shouldn’t be in the garbage, they should be with their mummas! What if she was hungry?”
I admit that since having my tinies, I have a hard time with the news. (Yes, me! the political junkie! the international news hound! the one with an opinion on everything!) Because every child could be my child now, you see.
And then your heart breaks into a million pieces for the mothers, the fathers, the babies, the families and the whole wide world.
Making Space for God
I can’t speak for anyone else but here is my story: I live a small life, compared to some. I am not saving the world on any grand scale. But everywhere my feet walk, everywhere my heart shows up, I try to make space for God there, for all our sakes.
It sounds a little trite–a bit “Better to light a candle than curse the darkness” sort of platitude–but the truth is, it keeps me singing the stories of goodness, of people who love well; it keeps me remembering that there is a vast family (not an army, we’re not that militant, really) of people all around us who are doing small things with great love in all of those stories and I, even in my own small ways, am a part of that.
How do you try to explain that someone likely threw away that wee babe, just hours after birth? I’m sure that there is a long story that led to that moment and who knows what desperation had been present, but still, it’s beyond my understanding, beyond what I can empathise, I admit. And here is my four-year-old, sobbing in the backseat over the thought of a poor wee baby alone in the garbage and I feel like crying right along with her.
So I told her (hoping it wasn’t a lie) it was likely an accident and the baby was fine and in the hospital, that the baby would find a good home and family who loved him or her. She calmed down but my heart was still heavy.
Staying Tender
I’m wondering: How do you keep your heart tender while still having your ears and feet and hands active in the stories of the world? Whether its child soldiers or human trafficking or foster care or war or systemic injustice or poverty or our work here with broken and hurting young women and on and on and on? Most of us, we become a bit hardened. Because otherwise, how do you deal with all of this? How can you take it all in and not have your heart broken?
You can’t.
But maybe going through life without any cracks in your heart isn’t the point. Maybe, when your heart is broken by what breaks the heart of God, the cracks are how the light gets in and how the love pours out.
How I See the World Now
My tinies help me see every other mother in the world with walls-crumbling-down eyes. Every little girl and boy could have their face.
Now it’s not enough just to raise them well to a suburb with a mini-van to go to church on Sunday and pay taxes. I am learning the counter-cultural in my own life and sowing it with prayer into their lives. Ours will be a family that tells a story of love because every girl or boy could be them, every mama could be me and every family could be us so we speak up, we pray, we sow our seed in hope and faith.
Sometimes I admit, I struggle with despair, with feeling like maybe it’s futile and the world is too big with too much hurt.
But then the Truth rises up in me and I have to believe (because it’s true–I see it every day) that God has a plan and a purpose for each of us, that God seeks to redeem this world and its hurts, that God has no role in any evil because he is a giver of every good and perfect gift we have and that what we do in this life–every choice we make for Love–matters.
About Sarah:
Sarah Bessey lives in Abbotsford, BC with her husband and three tinies. She’s a happy clappy Jesus-lover, non-profit marketing director, blogger and simple living/social justice wannabe. She blogs at www.emergingmummy.com and is on Twitter @emergingmummy.
Image credit: Love © 2010 Ammylynn | more info (via: Wylio)
