Thank God for Parents Who Swear

I mean this figuratively, in that this is a stand-in descriptor for "authentic, all-out-there, gritty, messy parents," but I absolutely also mean this literally.

Thank you, God, for parents who swear. In public. About their kids. In front of me.

This grateful thought escaped my mind heavenward as I drove my kids to a playdate, my mind otherwise plagued with the repeated message "Maybe I'm just not cut out for this parenting thing." It had been a really rough morning, and I had spent half of it yelling at my kids, another quarter of it being sarcastic and degrading to them, and the last quarter (to be generous with myself) apologizing for being such an asshole to them. Sometimes I tell myself that if I can't be a caring, patient, loving parent, the least I can do for my kids is model repentance, but I'm not so sure it was making much of an impact that day in the small servings I was dishing up.

"Maybe I'm not cut out for this. Maybe I'm not cut out for this." It's a paralyzing thought. Because what if it's true, and I'm in neck deep, and there's nothing I can do about it now. What if I made a horrible mistake that's going to haunt these kids for the rest of their earth-bound existence?

I began to contemplate: "If I'm not made for parenting, what kind of person is?" It took me back several weeks to a conversation that I had with my oldest over breakfast. It was during Lent and we were doing a daily scriptural reading provided by the children's ministry at our church--he asked about a word that kept popping up: "sinner."

"Mom, what is a sinner?"

I wish I could remember the whole conversation to share it verbatim, but as I recall, I asked him (buying time as I scrambled to find a fit answer) what he thought a sinner was. He responded meanderingly that it was a bad guy because they did bad things. I asked him if he ever did things he shouldn't do and when he honestly responded "yes," I asked him if he was a bad guy. He was thoughtful about it. "No," he decided. "So, I guess being a sinner just means being a human." And then, I didn't need to find an answer for him anymore. His childlike mind had grasped the concept far better than mine.

So, maybe the answer to my question about parenting uses a similar kind of logic. This to say that maybe the role of parent isn't something earned but something more basic and inherent. Maybe the answer to my question "What kind of person is made for parenting?" is simply: a human one. This has implications I haven't fully prepared for, doesn't it? I have an inkling of this because of our 7 years of unsuccessful attempts at procreation, which led to the adoption of our kids. I don't really mean to say that all humans are parents, but that all parents are human.

This imperfect argument brought me a small measure of solace that day. Maybe, just maybe, my unearned status as mother of these kids meant that I belonged where I found myself. That I did "have what it takes" because "what it takes" is a basic requirement that I was never responsible for in the first place.

Forgive this flawed contemplation, wondered at amongst the chaos of parenting three kids 5 and under. I had this thought while furiously putting my 3 year old's shoes and socks on for the fifth time that morning ("STOP TAKING THEM OFF," I had yelled). Essentially, the hope I was grasping at was that I could bring the self that I was--desperate, needy, flawed, terribly human--to my parenting and find that I did in fact belong there.

To return to my earlier point: I do find it hard to believe these comforting things when it seems I'm surrounded by parents whose kids eat healthy snacks and barely know what a screen is (let alone "screen-time"); who aren't scrolling through Facebook on their phones during playtime, and who speak to their children in dulcet tones even when they are being monsters. Parents who don't swear. I guess I try to believe my friends when they say that they feel what I do: frustration and rage at their tiny humans or debilitating inadequacy. But I have this superpower of holding myself to a standard about 1,000 levels above anything I require of anyone else on the planet so it's truly hard for me, personally, to believe we are experiencing the same things unless I actually see the evidence. And what I see are smart, sweet kids secure in the patient love of their enduring, self-sacrificing parents. Sometimes I mutter under my breath at my kids, "geez, quit being a dick." I've never heard a single one of my parent friends do that. So who's the outlier here?

I'm not advocating that we all scream at our kids in public. That we grab their wrists and drag them to the car. That we follow my example by shoving shoes on their feet, grumbling at them through gritted teeth. That we yank them about or scream "you little shit!" into their ears. Don't hear that, OK? This is what I really mean to say, after all this beating around the bush: Thank you, parents who swear.

Thank you for those brief and beautiful moments when in my company, you let escape the inner lives we all hide from the public. The exasperated sighs. Your head held in your hands, giving up for a moment. The tears. The "ef word" in association with your precious baby. The ungratefulness about parenting that those of us in the infertility community especially try to avoid--found in admittances about the losses that come with parenting, rather than a constant focus on the gains. For the most part, I try to keep these things hidden as well, but especially under recent stressors in our family life, it feels like I've lost the capacity to keep my humanity under wraps. On the particular day I'm referencing, I literally stomped my foot like a child at my 3-year old, gutturally issuing his name in a tone that came from previously unknown depths, in front of my friend and her kids. I hissed at him that he had "cried enough," that I was "done with that." Most of the time, I feel so alone in my humanity, especially as a parent. The rage and inadequacy is crushing, but the shame--oh the shame is debilitating. It's downright paralyzing.

When you share the lows with me, I can believe we are fellow travelers and that I am not, in fact, on a far lower and darker road than everyone else. It helps me believe that if our lows are similar, then perhaps our highs are, too, and that it's possible my kids are also smart, sweet, and secure in the patient love of enduring, self-sacrificing parents. (Or, at least, that they are secure in the hands of a gracious God, the true enduring and self-sacrificing parent, that will fill in the gaping holes left by my lackluster attempts.) When you snap at your kids or swear liberally about them behind your hand at our playdates, you give me hope that I'm not alone. You throw me a lifeline that keeps me from drowning in my own failure. So thank you for being vulnerable and human in front of me. Thank you for swearing.