Lois Lyda

 When did parenting become reduced to the bare-bones task of keeping them alive?

When I first started full-time mothering, I was convinced it was “the highest calling.” I envisioned soul-profiting days of Bible memory and life skills. I was even under the illusion that I’d be implementing praying the hours with my kids at our icon corner, in between bouts of meaningful tasks in our media-free society.

My perfect parenthood world came crashing down around me on Friday (shortly after opting out of morning prayers in lieu of Blue’s Clues). I was tidying up the kids bathroom with a little Windex wipe-down, and the kids were happily playing together about five feet away in the neighboring room. Their squawks and squeels made me smile as I scrubbed the watermelon toothpaste from the counter, peeking in every few minutes to watch them scale the side of the newly assembled bunk bed with great determination and delight. “Be careful” I cautioned, and then went back to my cleaning, while happiness was still on my side.

But then I heard an unusually strained squawk & squeel. One that, had I not been mere feet away, I would have never heard. I jutted into the room, “Everything okay . . ?”

To my horror, Eden was hanging from the side of the bunk, suspended by a rope that noosed her neck. She was an inch from the ground, but dangling, caught in her descent by a four-year-old’s determined grasp. “I’m pulling you up, Eden, come on!” he was shouting excitedly, completely oblivious to her struggle for breath.

Expeditiously, I scooped her up, pulled the knot loose, and drew her to me. Coughing and sputtering, and still grasping at her raw red neck, she could barely utter a word. “Lord have mercy” I whispered, holding my daughter silently, frightfully, too tightly until I began to cry the words as the thought of near-death struck me deeper still. In the blink of an eye I could have lost my daughter. I was unnerved.

I didn’t have the stamina to spank my son, who had started bawling from the top bunk. I couldn’t let go of my daughter, who’s little body was still taut, her heart pounding, her eyes filled with fear. I studied meticulously the pink ribbon of tender skin around her neck.

Gradually, tears watered our frightened embrace with unimaginable relief.

Thanks be to God, she was alive, and how precious this fragile little life was to me.

I have always taken it for granted that my home is a safe-haven. A place protected from harm. While I am certain my “baby proofing” could be more thorough, I have never thought of my home as a danger-zone, let alone potential crime-scene. I have never thought of myself as a negligent parent, either. Fluctuating between attentive and distracted perhaps, but never negligent.

All this has now changed for me. If I ever put myself on a parenting pedestal, I’ve been completely knocked off. My so-called “agenda” has been completely stripped. To be single-minded in my effort not to multi-task is one thing. Choosing to make important what is really important, another. But if I can just keep my kids alive while they’re in my care, it will be a most blessed accomplishment. One that, in and of itself, is a very high calling!

  One of the things that bothers me about Sunday worship is the break down of the family. And it’s not just parents from their children; siblings are quarantined off by narrow age margins of as little as six months.  And while the adults can enjoy the service without shushing or pointing a disciplinary finger, what are their children doing?  Certainly, they are being bred for worship.  But are they learning to be true worshipers, or are they learning to be the center of their own worship? 

Let me explain.  In most churchest I have visited, there is a multi-colored “kid zone” that alarmingly resembles a McDonalds playland. Equiped with slides, toys galore, maybe even french fries and a coke. . . does the children’s church resemble “church” in anyway? The children have fun, for sure, but do they learn anything about how to worship?  At best my son might scribble over the words “Jesus loves me” with a crayon (an activity that might take him a total of 10 seconds), but since he can’t read, did he learn anything about what worship looks like?  Instead, for two hours, with all his needs catered to, wildest fun guaranteed, he is taught how to be a consumer of stuff, a lover of pleasure, a worshiper of self. 

When our first-born was a few weeks old, we ventured out to a large church down the road.  I wasn’t about to place my newborn into the hands of a stranger in a room already teeming with helpless babes, so I brought him into the sanctuary with me.   I felt like I was sneaking him in;  we sat in the back to “hide him”, as if I was breaking the rules by wanting to worship with my new baby rather than without.  Within minutes my feelings were validated, as an announcement was made: “There is excellent child care for a reason  -  please use it.”  A thousand preying eyes pounced on me.  Embarrassed, I relocated to the nursing mom’s room, and watched the rest of the service on the TV monitor, separated from my husband and the worshipping community.  It was a very isolating experience, church sponsored motherhood aparthied.

When we first came to the Orthodox church, one of the things that attracted me was the sound of a crying baby, the shushing of a mother to her child, the sound of childrens voices mixed with mature ones. It was refreshing to see kids and parents worship together, approach the challice for communion as a family, raise  united voices in love for God.  It was heavenly. 

Even now after two years, I keep expecting kids to be discharged, but they never are.  A two hour liturgy doesn’t deter them from zealously attending church school after the service while the adults fellowship and break the fast together.  It is a suppliment, not a replacement for the worship service.  During this time, bible stories are taught, the liturgy explained, hymns practiced, bible verses memorized.  And this is why they call it “church school”; preparing, training, educating, growing children to be worshippers. 

Now that I have two toddlers, I faintly lament the loss of “dropping the kids off” in the morning.  It certainly would be much easier.  But I do not think it would be better, for them or for me.  It is my primary job (not the church’s) to raise my children to be worshippers of the living God; to be reverent; to be prayerful; to stand in awe of Him; to bow with humility before His throne; to be attentive to the Word of God.  As the saying goes, children “Do as I do, not as I say.”  It still remains that the best way for my children to learn how to worship is to watch me. 

What will become of our children if we let our churches spoon feed our children when they need solid food for spiritual growth?  If they spend the first seventeen years of their church life being catered to, playing games and having fun, they will never transition into “adult” worship.  Instead, they will become a generation who is disenchanted with the Church because it doesn’t meet their needs.  A generation who thinks the world revolves around them.  A generation with no respect for authority and no self-discipline.  I don’t want to see my son drinking out of a spiritual sippy cup at seventeen, do you?