Category Archives: Grandparenting

In the Baby Business

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Today I’ve had babies on the brain, probably because one of mine had a birthday today. It may also be because another of mine is soon to deliver a new grandbaby. Mostly, though, I think it’s just because I love babies.

Each birth is a miracle, not a single one “unwanted” or “unplanned” by God. Every child is born for lofty divine purposes, equipped with a soul that will live throughout eternity.

God wouldn’t have had to propagate the human race by bringing miniature people to earth through direct participation of a man and a woman. He could have brought smaller adult-lookalike “children” to the families of his choice just like he brought Eve to Adam, arriving with a new addition and saying, “This one’s yours.”

Instead he designed people to come from their mothers’ bodies in miniature, endowed with tiny fingers and toes, chubby arms and legs, and incredible cheeks. I can’t wait to talk to Eve one day and ask her what she thought when she was holding newborn Cain, the very first baby. She referred to him as a “man”, probably meaning “human”. Surely she was in awe of his soft skin and sweet scent, wondering if and how he would some day morph into a person like the adult Adam.

God surprised us by arranging for new human beings to arrive on the earth in a clever way wrapped in adorable bodies, but he’s been delivering surprises in many categories ever since. We can listen to “Science Friday” on public radio or watch “Nova” on TV or read any source that investigates God’s creation, both macro and micro, and see there’s no end-point to what he’s made and the ideas he’s come up with. The more new things science discovers, the more reasons we have to stand amazed.

Today as I talked with birthday “boy” Hans, I had the pleasure of participating by phone, from 4000 miles away, in the bath routine of my 3 British grandchildren. “Mee Mee’s going to come upstairs with us tonight,” he said, “so we can have bath time together!”

Their squeals of excitement came back through my speaker phone. “Shirts are coming off now,” Hans said, “and now the nappies. Oh what a big tummy you have!” (Katy’s giggles came over the air waves, too, as she joined in the fun.)

I could just “see” their pudgy toddler bodies lined up in the tub, “…like the three stooges,” Hans said. Hearing them splash, and listening to these young parents laugh with their children again and again was a gift my son gave to me on his own birthday.

Babies bring enthusiasm, cuteness and joy into our world. When God decided to get into the baby business, it was a spectacular idea. And even Jesus enjoyed handling them.

“People were bringing babies to Jesus for him to place his hands on them. ‘Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me.’” (Luke 18:15, Mark 9:37)

 

Family Similarities

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I love looking at baby pictures of friends’ grandchildren, studying pudgy faces in search of resemblances to parents and grandparents. God often weaves physical characteristics through the generations in a way that’s familial but new.

Grandparents have the delightful perspective of being one-generation-removed from the new babies that arrive. We’re involved with our grands, to be sure, but are no longer on parenting’s center stage.  Watching from the wings, we can observe similarities and differences, strengths and weaknesses that parents are often too busy to see.

As a young mom, my focus was getting the job done, whatever the moment demanded. Pausing to contemplate the inner-child required a slow-down I couldn’t afford. Now, as a grandma, I have the luxury of watching and listening. The more I study children, whether my family’s or others’, the more I appreciate God’s handiwork, particularly his unending design creativity.

Despite similarities through the generations, he never runs out of ways to make each individual unique. After creating trillions of people, he’s still enjoying his work-in-wombs, knitting together DNA strands of infinite variety.

Our family is looking forward to February, 2012, when we’ll get a look at what God has been up to for 9 months within my daughter Linnea. Who is he sending to join our ranks? What family characteristics will come through, and what fresh ideas will God have woven into this new person?

Craving answers to these questions is what’s partially responsible for Nate and I having 7 children. We couldn’t wait to see who else he might put together and send our way. I wish there’d have been more baby-bearing years so we could have had more children, because as our 7 have grown into honorable adults, I continue to be impressed with evidence of God’s creative flare in each of them.

I believe when we delight in the children God sends us, whether by birth, adoption, guardianship or friendship, we’re bringing pleasure to the One who made them. We can study children the same way the Creator stood back and studied the first human ever made. Just like him we can say, “You’re very good!”

This week God handed me a remarkable new thought. Nate has met and gotten to know our miscarried child.

It was a goose-bump moment for me and probably for Nate, too, when they first connected. Heaven is all about relationships, both backwards (past-borns) and forward (future-borns). On earth we’re limited to knowing only 3 or maybe 4 generations, but heavenly camaraderie will have no such limits.

We’ll get to see God-initiated traits and features threading their way through every generation, all the way back to Adam and Eve. And because he made us all in his image, maybe we’ll even be able to see attributes that began as far back as the Father, Son and Spirit! Awesome thought…

“Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous.” (Psalm 139:14)

Endless Flow

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Little children love to be outside. Even a fussy newborn often quiets under an open sky or in a gentle breeze. These days we’ve been taking lots of walks with my young grandchildren, each outing more exciting than a well planned field trip. Preschoolers notice everything from tiny bugs to bits of gravel and beg to stop and watch, touch, discuss.

Today as Skylar, Micah, their parents and I ambled home from the playground, both children preferred walking to riding in the stroller, which slowed our pace considerably but invited us to look at the world from their point of view. Stopping in front of a small child-high fountain became a photo op as they studied the wonder of a never-ending water flow.

The little concrete girl was filling a tub with water from her jug, and we talked about why she might be doing that (maybe to bathe her baby). But it was puzzling that she couldn’t complete her task, because the water just kept coming. But as children so easily do, they accepted that this was the way it was for her, and on we went.

Our local Christian bookstore displays an attention-grabbing item, too: a 16 ounce pop bottle filled with dirty water. Dark particles float in it and sediment rests at the bottom. A sign explains this is the best water many people have. Among other things, they strain it for drinking, an appalling thought. No wonder disease runs rampant and people die young.

One of the ongoing humanitarian efforts of missionaries and others is to bring clean, drinkable water to people who’ve never had it. I think back to biblical days and wonder if the water then was any better than what’s in the plastic pop bottle at the bookstore. Quality water was like gold in biblical times, since that area of the world was (and is) mostly parched desert. Just reading through scriptural stories makes me want to head for the kitchen for a cool drink.

The Bible often uses water in powerful object lessons. One example is Jesus’ conversation with a woman at a community well where he referred to himself as the living water. Another was an Old Testament reference to God being the fountain of life. We also learn we’ll be drinking miraculous water in heaven one day.

The one thing these water images have in common is that they’ll never run dry. When earth’s water-resources have disappeared completely, streams of living water will be flowing still, into us, which means we’ll never go thirsty, not literally and not spiritually. Like the little concrete fountain Skylar and Micah appreciated this afternoon, the life-giving water available through divinity will keep running indefinitely.

The only difference between the fountain-girl pouring into a wash tub and God pouring into us is that her supply comes through a hose connected to a city water tank. And his? His comes from… well… him!

“You [O Lord] give [the children of men] to drink of the river of Your delights. For with You is the fountain of life.” (Psalm 36:8,9)