Brave Mommas

For Mine

This week my reading of the blog article "Brave Mom's Raise Brave Kids"  intersected with my own mom's posting of the following photo.

She's visiting the slums of Nairobi, Kenya this week, stepping into conditions worse than most of us will ever see.

 

 

Her caption: "A micro loan recipient that we met today."

 

It's no wonder this mommas's brave son (who also happens to be my amazing brother) has planted himself in the garbage dump/slums of Guatemala, changing lives of children who have nothing.

 

"Scared moms raise scared kids. Brave moms raise brave kids," writes Jen Hatmaker, author of the aforementioned blog. 

When I was 15 years old my aunt returned from Romania with stories of holding orphan babies and I knew I wanted to get out of my suburban life and rub shoulders with lives much different than mine. 
Not much later, I responded to a catalog in the mail {before internet, people} and signed up to ship out to West Africa for a month of my summer.

I was fifteen.  My mom didn't blink an eye.  I couldn't even drive a car and she let me climb aboard a plane and head to the other side of the world for a whole month without a soul either of us knew.

To this day I don't know if that was hard for her.  Or if her friends called her crazy.  But I realize now, two kids later, that she was brave. 

I wrote one of the wisest moms I know this past week for some parenting advice. 

I am mom to two sons with opposing personalities, and one happens to be scared of, well, everything.  His first soccer game he ran the opposite way of the ball.  No joke.  His first month of preschool he refused to talk to the teacher.  He is scared of the movie theatre.  For real.  I have forced him to order his own food at McDonald's and you would think I asked him to jump out of an airplane.

So, needless to say, I don't aways know what it looks like to teach this child to be brave. 

Her advice:  " Don't let your fears lead you. Fear is a liar."

Scared moms raise scared kids. 

A dear friend of mine fought her anxiety as she brought her tearful son to kindergarten, knowing better than to give in to her own fears or her son's.

Another friend opted to homeschool her son for the year, and fought fears of "what will everyone say" as she made an unconventional choice.

Two differing decisions, both brave as far as it relates to raising five year olds, as both moms chose what was best rather than what was easy.

I still have little ones who have yet to face dangers more serious than an unfamiliar classroom, but I've always wondered, where the heck was David's mom in this scene and if I were her, would I let my son step into the fight? 

It's one thing to say "The battle is the Lord's" when your own life is at risk; it's another thing entirely when your child's life is at stake.

As mommas, when do we protect, when do we release?

I'm far from knowing that answer.  I'm wrestling through what that looks like in parenting my five year old, trying to determine what I am afraid of and not letting that dictate my decisions.  And I'm praying for grace in years to come as I know the decisions will only carry more weight with age.

My own mom looked for plenty of opportunities to coddle us - she's a mom, for goodness sakes, that is what moms do best, but I'm quite convinced I would not be who I am today if my mom had not been brave enough to let me step aboard that airplane as a fifteen year old.

So I'm adding to my grateful tree these two gifts, and I'm praying I would pass down a heritage of a momma brave enough to face a less than perfect world.