Since April, every time I turn around, I’ve been running headlong into one end or another of the same intractable paradox while stumbling upon the actual word “paradox” and what some philosopher, theologian or researcher has to say about yet another paradox.
Paradox was not my word for the year. I’m over here anyway, repeatedly bruising myself against this emphatically mid-life paradox and, like a magpie, hoarding references to every other paradox I happen on. Maybe one of these shiny paradoxes will unlock the secret to what ails me?
My bruised soul sure hopes so.
The contours of the mid-life paradox that I keep stubbing my toes on are this: I know as much about life as I’ve ever known, but the more I learn, the more I recognize that there is still SO MUCH I haven’t figured out. And. I’m simultaneously over here attempting to manage my teenage offspring realizing, deep in the marrow of my bones, that I know so much more than my kids. So. Much. More.
In short my midlife paradox1 is just that: knowing so much, understanding it’s so little, and concurrently realizing I absolutely know significantly more than my spawn who act as though they actually know everything and know very little.
Now, ok. I always knew that I know more than my kids. When they were babies they didn’t know anything. Babies maybe don’t even know why they’re crying, just that something’s wrong. So they cry.
And then you teach them and help them every single day for years and years with all kinds of tasks. Essential human tasks (from how to use a spoon to how to wipe their own behind) and more abstract-concrete things like reading, writing, arithmetic and then even more abstract things…philosophy, ideas, time management… And as a Christian2, I’ve gone around and around trying to teach my kids about Jesus. Attempting to introduce them to Jesus, really. Yeah. I like thinking of Christian discipleship in terms of introducing my kids to Jesus.3 It sounds noble, but my implementation of this goal has been humble, at best.
In fact, as they’ve grown, the sweet lessons I would pat myself on the back for having taught them — the obvious life lessons I’d underline for them, the kinds of things that I would regularly write about on the internet — well, they’ve come to feel like moralizing. Sermonizing. And I’m not sure of the “results.”
So I’ve been over here on the East side of Kalispell intermittently trying to introduce my kids to an invisible God who put on flesh … who walked the earth in a time and culture that I don’t understand very well… who said and did a great number of things that I can’t explain very well…who left a collection of writings ranging from ancient to extremely ancient explaining His plan for humanity4…and how I can interpret it all to make suggestions for how it might apply to the specifics in my kids’ lives when life is messy and sometimes painful and confusing.
When I put it like that, it’s no wonder I’m having trouble making sense to the kids. I’m overcomplicating things. I can’t help it.
Lest you imagine my life as a stay-at-home, homeschool mom in terms of someone else’s beautiful Instagram page, please picture our reality: a middle-aged woman in small-town Montana, burned out from practicing law, bad at keeping the house, regularly taking a nap in the middle of the “homeschool” day because she can’t drum up the patience to deal with getting the younger two through their literature5 after accidentally reverting to a shrill 17-year-old version of herself whilst trying to get a handle on where the eldest wants to drive to, who she’ll be with, for how long, and whether everyone’s partaken of too much technology today.
Yeah, I’ve been trying to introduce my kids to Jesus but I don’t yet live enough like Him to feel adequate to the task. And even the little I do have a handle on seems to fall flat or otherwise be lost in translation. (Feel free to ask my teenagers about how “unfair” and “restrictive” we are and witness the giant eye-rolls as I attempt to dispense my actual wisdom…Will they rebel because we’ve set boundaries in the wrong places? Have we failed to provide a safe space for them to bring their feelings and problems? Do I actually cave too much? Am I too inconsistent?)
This is the backdrop for my mid-life paradox. And yet. It’s not all I know, this floundering as I parent teens.
Cushioning the impact of all my running into the edges of the mid-life paradox is His abiding Grace. I used to have all.this.angst about whether God exists and whether Jesus’ claims about Himself were true. I counterbalanced my Angst6 with earnestness and certainty. When I had moments of sheer existential terror that I didn’t *know* whether God was real, I would study harder, pray more and attempt to persuade all the people of the authenticy of my faith.
I realized not too long ago that sometime in the last 5ish years, this Angst has dissolved. In its place is a knowledge that I feel in my body that God sees the world’s turmoil, feels our individual aches and pains and sent Jesus to redeem us. I have experienced times where I know in the marrow of my bones that this ancient-yet-present Yahweh of the Bible was feeling with me the sad things and sometimes, I’ve experienced circumstances where He’s smiling at me with a twinkle of delight.
With the loss of the Angst, I’ve also lost my earnestness and certainty. I’m ambivalent about whether this has been a good exchange. I enjoy the lack of existential Angst and I certainly enjoy the abiding existential peace, but, here I am parenting teenagers and don’t teenagers respond to earnestness? Certainty? I just can’t with the earnestness and certainty anymore. I don’t know what God’s playing at here.
So, I long for a tidy lesson I can apply to parenting teenagers and give to people with three action steps. But, I can’t pin any down. All I can tell them is that I’m a middle-aged mom raising teenagers who has the life experience to know a lot of things, the wisdom to know there are that many more things she doesn’t know while simultaneously knowing she knows SO MUCH MORE than her kids.
In the months I’ve been struggling to finish this essay, casting about for a closing in the midst of unseemly ambiguity, I happened upon one of my teen’s willful flirtation with a sin that is firmly labeled in my mind: “if allowed to fully grow can blow up your life.7“
Once again, I addressed the issue with said teen who deflected and rationalized, “Mom, it could be so much worse.” Right. I exclaimed, somewhat tearfully, “it hurts my heart that you are continuing to be unwise in this area of your life. I feel no peace about this.”
Cue the rolling of eyes and stonewall.
We continued the evening and, as a family before bed a bit later, we prayed. It got to this teen’s turn and said child interceded as follows: “Jesus, please help Mom with her anxiety. Help her trust in You, like pastor talked about today, You take care of the sparrows and lillies. She doesn’t have to worry.”8
I don’t have answers to the persistent questions of how to raise teenagers. I have no tips or tricks.
But. What I can confidently testify to is this: after this kids’ supercilious prayer for me, my anxiety has decreased significantly. Apparently, there is power in prayer. (And, this whole situation that night was God, once again winking at me).
- Or is it my mid-life crises … both/and? mid-life criradox, paracris? paradoxises? I’d coin them all! ↩︎
- I feel like adding a modifier here to explain…born-again Christian?, evangelical Christian?, Jesus-follower?, Jesus apprentice?…None of these is quite right, but not all wrong, either. See? I know that I don’t know….Mid-life paradox. ↩︎
- I could get really in the weeds here and say, “apprentice” to Jesus, as John Mark Comer has helped us understand the goal of Christian life. This feels pretentious for me to talk about, particularly in light of how things have been going this summer. So, I’ll leave it at “disciple,” even though “apprentice” makes much more sense to my 21st century self. ↩︎
- Tell me your an Enneagram 6 wing 5 without telling me your an Enneagram 6 wing 5 😉 ↩︎
- Yes, it’s currently August and no, we aren’t doing literature in August. I started this post in May when we were still doing literature. Sorry for the delay. ↩︎
- Yes, it was Angst with a capital “A” ↩︎
- This teen has not blown up their life. This teen is amazing. But the potential they might blow up their life wakes me in the middle of the night. Clearly, my Angst has morphed into parental angst. ↩︎
- Did it take everything in me at that moment to not laugh, cry, tear my hair out and strangle this teenager? Why, yes. I’m chalking up my heroic non-response to Jesus’ continuing sanctifying work in my life. ↩︎