Gently

“He tends his flock like a shepherd:
    He gathers the lambs in his arms
and carries them close to his heart;
    he gently leads those that have young.”

Isaiah 40:11

As the school year gets underway in our part of the world, I’ve been thinking a lot about the emotional journey we take as parents–in part because the next several years hold some big milestones for our family. I’ve found myself reflecting back on all the milestones that have come before and they way in which, for me, they’re mingled with a complicated tangle of emotions.

So, as we wrap up summer and launch into a new school year, allow me to start by saying this: it’s all right. It’s all right if the start of the school year rends your heart. If the thought of sending your little one off to kindergarten, of watching your middle schooler get on the bus, of dropping your firstborn off at college and driving away… If those things tear your heart in two, it’s all right.

Likewise, if what you feel as the year starts is relief, that’s all right too. If you’ve spent a whole summer and only have a few moments of pure golden memories to show for it, if you feel exhausted from having poured yourself out, if you know that structure and routine will be good for all of you… It’s all right.

In this parenting journey, every experience is shadowed by highs and lows, isn’t it? The joy of watching our baby take their first steps–but the grief of knowing they’ll no longer reach those little arms up for us to carry them. The laughter and joy of seeing the preschooler with the backpack that’s nearly as large as they are–yet sadness, knowing they won’t be learning everything from us anymore.

And it’s not just joy and sadness that war in our hearts. There are countless other layers: worry, fear, guilt, discouragement, weariness, disappointment, frustration… The list is nearly endless, and the weight of it all, sometimes, makes us question whether we’re doing any of this right.

We are.

I stumbled on a passage in Isaiah once when I was in the thick of raising toddlers. It was a time when it felt as though all of me was being poured out in the service of filling sippy cups, tying shoes, dealing with tantrums, and fighting for naptimes. Both the physical and the emotional demands of that season took all I had, yet I often felt I was falling short. Failing. That the feelings I had–all of them, mixed together–meant I wasn’t “doing this right.”

Then I came to these words: “He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young.”

Oh, how I needed that promise! I needed to know that Someone, a wise shepherd, was carrying my children close, making up for all the ways I fell short. There was peace and comfort in that thought alone, but there was more.

I’d been pushing myself hard, allowing guilt to color our days and my perception of my own abilities as a mother. Those few words unraveled all of it.

“He gently leads those that have young.”

He makes allowances for those with young, because he knows the load they bear is heavy. It’s cumbersome. It’s difficult. He doesn’t just lead them slowly, or with a certain understanding, but gently.

The Good Shepherd knows this road is hard. Wracked with conflicting emotions and self-doubt, and even self-reproach. This experience of parenting sanctifies us by fire. It takes a tender heart and nerves of steel. And it’s all right. Not because he wants us to get lost in those things, but it’s all right in that he understands. He carries our children close to his heart, but he also carries us, their parents. He leads us, giving us all the wisdom and resources we need to raise our young. And he is gentle with us.

Does that settle on your soul like a warm blanket, or perhaps like a balm? Because it eases my chapped heart. It settles in the rough, broken places that are being rubbed raw in this business of raising kids–raising teens–and brings a sort of calm healing.

If our Good Shepherd knows to be gentle with us, perhaps it’s time we were gentle with ourselves, too. Let the emotions land softly, without reproach. Walk through this season of parenthood slowly, intentionally, letting the Shepherd lead us.

It’s all right. You can be gentle with yourself.

And trust, friend, that he carries your young ones close to his heart. They–and you–will never be in better hands.