Foundations for a Happy Family

With Mother's Day coming on Sunday, we decided to share two pieces by Gretchen. Watch for the second coming this Friday...

I will never forget what it felt like to hold my little girl in my arms for the very first time. It’s impossible to know a mother’s love until you become a mother yourself. Everyone tells you it will change your life completely. And you think you understand. But you don’t really understand until that little bundle is placed in your arms and your life changes—completely and forever.

I’ve wanted to be a wife and mommy as long as I can remember. I played with dolls. I babysat my cousins. I volunteered in the church nursery. And then my baby sister was born. I was twelve. My brother was ten. We couldn’t have been more thrilled. The baby brother who arrived three years later only doubled the fun. We hovered over them constantly, changing their diapers and playing with them, and doing plenty of bossing around when they became older. I was grateful for the hands-on baby-care experience. And even more important, my brother and I got to watch my dad and mom as they raised our younger siblings.

I’m sure my parents didn’t do everything right in raising the four of us. But the more families I observe, the more I realize how rare our upbringing was. You see, Dad and Mom taught us that delayed obedience was disobedience. We didn’t get to wait until they counted to ten. “To delay is to disobey.” We were not allowed to talk back—in word or in look. And talking back to Mom was talking back to Daddy’s wife, which was double trouble. Our parents expected us to obey. They told people we were well-behaved, and they trusted us to live up to it.

It helped to have this clarified before we hit the teen years. My parents, in their God-given wisdom, knew that preventing teenage rebellion didn’t start at age twelve. In fact, it started even before those “terrible twos.” They began laying the foundations for obedience before we could even choose to disobey.

From the beginning they set the standard that Daddy and Mommy were in charge. Maybe we didn’t always like the fact that we were not the center of the universe. But my brother and I learned it worked better that way. And we knew that when we became parents, we wanted to raise our kids with this common-sense, biblical principle.

One of the many things that made me fall in love with my husband was watching him with our younger siblings, as well as his niece and nephews. It was easy to picture him as a firm but doting daddy to some red-haired, curly-headed little ones. And when, after a year and a half of marriage to my best friend, our beautiful baby daughter arrived, we were thrilled to become parents—but I didn’t want the honeymoon to end.

Becoming a mommy fulfilled so many dreams and desires. But I wanted my husband to know he was still number one in my life. And as his helpmeet, I needed to be able to cook his dinners, keep his house clean, and be available to help him on the farm when he needed me—in addition to taking care of his daughter. I knew that because of our family business I’d need to be able to leave our baby girl with her aunt or grandma. As well as train her to be a well-behaved mommy’s helper at home and in the family-run store in future years.

So there I sat, with a brand-new baby in my arms, an overwhelming love growing in my heart, as a tremendous responsibility settled on my shoulders. But thankfully, my husband and I were surrounded by godly examples. We didn’t have to figure it out on our own.

And so we started out raising our little girl as our parents and grandparents did before us: with a whole lot of prayer, quite a few tears, bushels of love, and a good dose of common sense. There were nights where we looked at each other in exhausted consternation, wondering what in the world was wrong with our crying little one who didn’t want to eat, sleep, or anything else. And there were many times when we tip-toed over to the crib together, just to stare at the sleeping child who was such a blend of the two of us.

As she grew, we learned—we could soon distinguish the hungry cries from the tired cries, the tears that needed attention from the tears that just needed to be cried. And as she grew, we began to teach her—with that helpful, happy toddler in mind. We told her over and over that we loved her. But we also explained to her, as we swaddled her up tight and laid her in the crib, that it was because we loved her that we knew she needed a nap.

We followed the example of our parents, who had raised nine children between them. We listened to the wisdom of our grandparents, who had lived through many crying babies and sleepless nights. They had experience, and common sense.

It was my desire for a way to share some of that generations-old common-sense with my pregnant friends that sent me to the library...

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