Lie Moms Believe #8: “It’s Too Late”

This is a big moment, because I’m going to confess to you (all of you, over the internet) one of my greatest parenting failures.

I am dead serious. I try not to think about it too much, because it makes me get really stressed and anxious. Here goes.

I am horrible at taking pictures and videos of my kids.

Sure, even if I never took another picture, I’d still have 10 times what my mother and grandmother have in the way of preserved memories.

But nothing like what I could have.

And isn’t it awful? I have no excuses. None. I mean, it’s the age of technology. I have everything at my fingertips to capture memories for decades to come of these beautiful children, and then me… forgetting my camera, memory being full, or just plain forgetting to capture the important (and unimportant) moments.

I’m just bad, bad, bad at it.

Sometimes, laying in bed, I’ll start thinking about it, and my heart rate goes up, and I start sweating, having awake nightmares of it all.

But here’s the really fascinating thing.

I am only six years into parenting. My youngest is still a baby. I could decide right now, today, that I am going to improve this area. And there you go – problem solved.

But it’s funny, isn’t it? How we write character descriptions of ourselves (or our families), and are strangely reticent to change them?

About ourselves…

I’m so disorganized.

I’m horrible at meal planning. 

Oh, I don’t work out. Are you kidding?

I’m just bad at having my quiet times.

About our kids…

Oh, my kids are so picky – they’ll never eat anything.

The kids fight ALL THE TIME at our house. It’s just how it is.

My kids HATE chores. They won’t do anything!

They’re bad sleepers. That’s just how they are.

And about our marriage ~

Our budget is out of control…we just aren’t good at money.

We never pray together. It’s just not us.

Do you see it? Do you see the Lie?

We “write” these scripts for our lives, and feel powerless to change them. But in reality, often these changes (though difficult) are completely possible. 

Years ago, I had an older friend (she is maybe 60 now?). She was overweight and inactive – had been her whole life. She had a health scare, and at fifty years old, decided to begin running.

At fifty. Trained for her first half-marathon, after never running a step.

She helped me train for my first half-marathon and has done dozens more of her own. I had another good friend, after she was married, who decided she wanted to take piano lessons. So why not? This 30-something grown woman found a teacher and practiced her scales.

I think we are especially vulnerable to this lie – this “It’s Too Late” lie – when we are parents. No matter how many years of parenting you’ve logged, it feels in some ways like you have always had these children. That your family has always been this way.

Friends, it is never too late to begin to change.

It sounds cheesy to say, but this day, today, this could be your New Day. Is there something in yourself or your parenting that nags at you, guilts you, haunts you? Is there something you’d like to change? Do not assume you are as you will always be. Worse, do not assume that your kids, or your marriage will always be as they are.

Rewrite the story.

You can change.

Me? I just dug up my old digital camera and charged the battery. (I’m going to use it tomorrow, you know.)

 

 

 

 

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