Lonny walks in through the porch door, removes his boots and enters the living room to say hello. But the room has been transformed.
There are wooden block castles, tall as the end tables, stacked on the hardwood. Plastic knights perch on the backs of wingchairs and peek from the folds of floor-length drapes. Someone constructed a ship from Legos, and it’s sailing on a blue-blanket sea.
Lonny steps between the castles, over the water and pecks me on the cheek. Our two little boys are by my side, and he gives them a squeeze. The wild mess doesn’t alarm him.
The house often looks this way.
I didn’t always allow myself or my children this freedom, though. Years ago, when my older boys were younger, I tried to press myself into another’s mold. There was a mama at church, a good mama, and many of us admired the way she parented. From big things like discipline down to the smallest things.
“Jennifer doesn’t allow toys in her living room,” a friend told me one afternoon. “I think that’s a good idea. I’m going to have my kids play with toys in their bedrooms only, too.”
Sounded good to me. I gave it a try. It lasted for two days.
We were miserable.
Turns out that I’m a laid-back, creative mama. My children and I are most happy when there’s something being constructed on the end of our dining room table or when we cover the porch floor with paper and go wild with colorful jars of paint. It’s not better or worse than the way that Jennifer parents.
It’s just different.
I will praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful. I know that full well. (Psalm 139:14)
I feel, as I move through motherhood, that I’m honoring God when I’m most true to who He made me to be. He gave us His Word as a moral perimeter for our well-being. But within that loving fence, there is room to move. To stretch. To be free.
While it’s wise to learn from our friends, when I deny who I am to be just like another, something is lost.
Something dear to the Father.
Me.
“Who lives in the castle?” Lonny asks. He sits down, pretzel-leg style, beside the boys. Gabriel shares. Isaiah is busy making a flag for the ship. He’s gone to the kitchen for drinking straws and a roll of tape.
I stand, to start dinner, but I have to tiptoe through lands and lakes. I peek over my shoulder as I go.
And I’m thankful that there are no carbon copies with God’s most precious creation.
We’re all wonderfully made.
