There is a pain in parenting, but it hurts most — and deepest — in a rather different way than you might think.
You might have an impression of the pain of parenting based upon our complaints. The neediness of our kids. The constant ways in which kids have plotted together to make sure that you never finish, or even begin, a conversation with your wife, or an adult, when in their presence. Perhaps, the constant accidents, tantrums, and the destroying of things. The constant coming into your room, interrupting your sleep. The constant coughing, fevers, sicknesses. There is always something with someone and it is an inconvenience to those of us who like to arrange our lives as conveniently as possible. We gripe about this a lot.
These might be the things that give shape to our complaining, but don’t be fooled. It’s not these things that hurt us the most.
It is a snaggle-toothed boy, instead.
See, if you are a parent, know a child, or were a child, then you know that losing the top front teeth is a sign that the little kid stage is over and the big kid era has begun. Quite simply, my little boy Henry is not a little boy anymore and I can see it in his smile. Missing the top tooth is as sure a sign as there can be.
Parenting is the most painful because it is very temporary. Sometimes, you hear parents say that there are transcendent moments when you wish you could freeze time. Well, you can’t. I had one of those times, once. I had built a slip-slide for my boys on a summer day. But, fifteen seconds into the fun is when I realized that the moment would pass and that this stage of my life — when my boys could be taken to a magical place by a sheet of plastic, a stream of water, and squirt dish soap — would be over. And that hurt my heart.
You have had the same moments, of course. It is not limited to parenting. It’s just that raising kids is fresh on my mind.
Because two bites into that meal, it dawned on you. One hundred paces into that hike and you felt it in your bones. By the second song at the concert or the fourth scene of the play, you knew.
Have you noticed that pulling yourself together after the good medicine of laughter sounds like a sigh? We chuckle to the point of tears, then we sigh. That is because it is the beginning of a subtle stage of grief at the temporary nature of the experience. The transcendant joys in our lives contain a slight sorrow, don’t they?
In a Christian way of imagining the world, these aches in your heart, those pains the vaporous nature of this life inflicts are signposts that are pointing you to a deep truth.
If you follow these moments to where they are supposed to lead, you find that you were made for things to never end and, in fact, something new that won’t end is coming. And you desire that forever thing very very bad. You want it deeply. It is your truest hunger. In fact, it is the want beneath all your desires. And you’ll have what you are looking for one day.
In a fallen world, things end as an act of mercy. We simply can only bear so much. But a fallen world is quickly and slowly giving way to a redeemed one, where all things are new and right, where time will not be a cruel thing, but a kindness, because all will be healed. And you will discover that your desire for something more, is actually a desire for Someone more.
And you will have him. You will see his face and his name will be on your foreheads (Revelation 22:4), which is a way of saying you will be deeply seen and known, forever. On that day, you will not be disappointed. I promise you.
A gap in a seven-year old’s grin speaks of these things.