*MY* Oxen Are In

After that last post, "The Oxen Are In", I just had to share the exciting happenings of my own little oxen stall this morning.

I was feeding my 2 month old baby girl at 6:00am, after Daddy left for work. She's a very smiley, sweet baby who still wakes every 2 or 3 hours through the night to eat. Now that's a LOT of special "bonding time". Then I heard my 1 1/2 year old son's cheerful, wide awake voice calling "momma, Momma, MOMMA". Another special experience, since he's the first of my children to wake up cheerfully everyday. Truthfully, somedays I just don't feel ready for THAT much exuberance THAT early, but to continue on...  Next I heard my "just-turned-three year old" daughter moving around in her room.

Her morning ritual is to wake up and instantly begin gathering every doll, stuffed animal, blanket, bottle, and doll brush from her room to carry out to the living room. If she had a motto I believe it might be "start the day prepared to play" or something like that. but to continue on with the story...

I got my little boy up and changed his diaper, and then I thought I'd get an early jump start on the day. (good decision, considering I really had no choice in the matter, right?) so I started the bathtub filling with a nice bubble bath for the kids. As always, my little boy came in to reach into the tub and help stir those bubbles in anticipation for his much loved bath. So sweet.

From down the hall came my 3 olds wailing (yes, she "wails", doesn't usually cry or scream but moans and wails - very unique). I ran to find out the reason for her grief and alas, she had inadvertently locked herself into her bedroom, when she had tried to turn the door knob while juggling all her babies and animals... Now she doesn't know how to unlock the door by herself and try as I might I've never got that little poky metal door-unlocky thingy to work on that particular door so the only solution seemed to be to wake up my oldest, the peacefully sleeping 4 year old girl in that same very room, and have her unlock the door. Sounds like a simple solution, right? Only if you don't know my oldest daughter. She has the amazing gift of being able to sleep through practically anything, and once she does finally begin to wake up it's a few minutes before she is actually a functioning little person. I won't expand on how long I called, sang, and yelled through the door until she was up and able to understand the problem and walk over and unlock the door. Yay! A small victory.

But wait - why is my little boy suddenly SCREAMING from the bathroom? Another quick jaunt back down the hall to discover he had leaned just a little too far over the bathtub edge trying to reach that elusive rubber ducky. He was fine - just standing in the tub crying, with pj's and diaper soaking wet. The second I undressed him and put him back in the bath he was overjoyed and started laughing and playing. In went the other two girls and lastly baby girl, and tada - I had four happy children playing (or laying in baby's case) happily in the tub together.

What an organized systematic Mama I must be to have things going so well by 7:30 in the morning ;-)

This was an extreme - though not too out-of-the-ordinary - morning for me, and once again I was thankful for all the words we hear on vocation. Just last week a friend showed me another quote from the Book "Luther on the Christian Home" by William Lazareth. (same book this post is based on)

"Coming to know and love Christ does not necessarily change what we do, but rather how, why, and for whom we do it. 
~
Faith transforms our occupations into Christian vocations." 

William Lazareth

Since some people asked about this book I thought I'd let you know I ordered mine from Amazon. It's pricey but I think it's worth it. So far I've only read the chapter "The Common Life" ~ I skipped right up to it ~ but I'm planning on going back and reading the book through. (maybe during some of those middle of the night "bonding" times with my baby ;-)

Poured From A Steady Hand

I miss the Concordian Sisters of Perpetual Parturition. One post in particular comes to my mind a lot.  Poured From A Steady Hand. You will surely be edified and inspired to thankfulness. It's a stunningly beautiful tribute to God's faithfulness and His generosity toward us.

Here's how it starts:

"The other day I sat and rocked my baby for an entire hour. My fifthborn--Can you imagine? I just sat and rocked him...." Then further in she says, "So I snuggled my nursling under a fleece blanket, and he settled, and sighed, and periodically shuddered in utter contentment." Then even further in she says, "And I thought, My Life is impossibly rich." 

     

Painting: Sweet Dreams by Firmin Baes (1874-1945, Belgian) 

My Pastor has continually over the years reminded us mothers to just sit and rock our babies and look at them. Enjoy them. Don't be too busy. 

And lately he's been asking, How rich are you? Don't be tricked into thinking about what you don't have and what God hasn't done (that you think He should have). Adam and Eve were given an entire garden full of trees--but what did they think about? The one tree they weren't given. Instead, think about all you've been given, and all that God has done for you. You are very, very rich. As one woman said, "All this, and Christ too!"

Here's a link to the complete post  Poured From a Steady Hand ,  on the CSPP blog. 

(Thank you, Concordian Sisters, and may the Lord bless you.)

The Oxen are In

I am no stranger to household messes.  My husband and I had our first five babies in six years. Lots of messes there. Then we continued on, to have six more babies.   Five children plus six more children equals eleven, which equals mess after mess, and messes on top of messes!  Our oldest was 21 when our youngest was born, so even when we had older children that weren't still making messes, we also always had younger children that were. I remember sometimes, back then, I would think of  Proverbs 14:4 (Where no oxen are, the crib is clean, but much increase is by the strength of the ox) and I would comfort myself those words.  Not that our children were oxen, or our house  a barn.  But somehow I drew comfort from the fact that all my hard work wouldn't be in vain. Someday much increase would come through those little mess makers. So when this title caught my eye, on the Femina blog, I had to smile. I knew what it would be about.  The Oxen Are In.  Read it here on the Femina blog.

                                                                He looks innocent enough.

                                             

A children's alternative to YouTube

Here is a helpful app if you ever let your young children  watch videos from YouTube on your iPhone or iPad.  If you're like me you cringe at all the "related videos" that are on the side or bottom of the screen.  Try this app.  It is called KidsTube.  

Step 1. Search for the videos you want for you child and click the add button - these will be added to your child's library

Step 2. Lock the library - passcode so no videos can be added or deleted with out you

Step. 3 let your child watch the videos you selected without additional content bombarding them. 

There is also a feature to save the videos to your device for future playing when not connected to the internet. 

Enjoying God's Creaturely Gifts

"...In believing that  'All things are pure to the pure in heart,'  Luther's faith was simple enough to trust that after a conscientious day's labor, a Christian father could come home and eat his sausage, drink his beer, play his flute, sing with his children, and make love to his wife -- all to the glory of God!..."

 Quote from From Luther on the Christian Home by William H. Lazareth.
Painting: Fredrick George Cotman (1850-1920) One of the Family

A Christian Perspective on Children

These are excerpts from a lecture given by Anthony Esolen. You can watch it here onYouTube.

"Do you remember when you were growing up, back in the day when there were these things called children? And they ran around in what used to be called yards and streets. And they engaged in an activity called play? 

...[As a culture] We have become the kinds of people who do not like children. Why do I say we do not like children? We have few. If you really do like children, you have them. And if you can, you have quite a few of them. You like them. You like their company. You like their ways. You find them somehow to brighten your life. You enjoy them.

...Children remind us of our weakness and destroy our illusion of choice.

...People are afraid of children because they think that children will destroy their lives.They are absolutely right! Children will destroy their lives. That's why God gave us them. Because otherwise our lives are like little hard kernels of selfishness. Kernels of egotism. And it's really hard to break through that shell. But God sends children, as invaders, precisely to do that. To break open that hardest substance in the universe, the human heart. The child comes to break open our dead lives, and to show us what life is, and life in abundance. And that’s what the Christ child came to do."  

Paintings: Theolphile-Emmanuel Duverger (1821-1901) Hopscotch, and  Gaetano Belli (1857-1922) Grandmother

Children Are an Heritage of the LORD

"Lo, children are an heritage of the LORD: and the fruit of the womb is his reward.

As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children of the youth.

Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them: they shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate."     Psalm 127:3-5

Congratulations Ben & Mary,
on the birth of you wonderful daughter!

This Is It

As a young woman I would daydream from time to time of what my married life with children would be like someday.  I did not yet know who my husband would be or what my future children would look like, but vague visions of them occasionally filled my mind. I would see myself reading stories to happy children while we sat in a circle on a sunshine strewn living room floor, or perhaps, an adorable dirty cheeked little boy, a football set down on the chair beside him, reading his schoolbook aloud to me while I kneaded the bread for dinner, or maybe we'd be taking a walk together on a crisp autumn afternoon, or singing together at the piano, or even cleaning the house together. But there would be laughter, appreciation, discipline, joy, wonder, and love.

It seemed realistic. I'd witnessed bits and pieces of those things happening in families I admired.  I had good examples of Christian women, wives, and mothers around me. I knew they worked hard (although I could never have known then just how hard), yet they loved and were loved. I looked forward to being like my idea of them. My future life was like a distant rainbow, just on the other side of the meadow.  Sometime, in the years to come I would reach it, I hoped.

Fast Forward.

Now here I am, just having passed my seventeenth wedding anniversary, with seven children.

A few months ago I was doing what I do every morning after having sent the older children to school and finishing the continuously interrupted breakfast clean up.  I was giving my youngest three children (we'll just call them numbers 1, 2, and 3) their morning bath. It went something like this. Undress children, 1, 2, 3. Place children in tub, 1, 2, 3. Dump in toys. Wet down hair, 1, 2, 3. Wash hair, 1, 2, 3. Wash faces. Wash noses. Let's get on with it. Tell children to put toys back in bin.  Grab towels. Lift children out, 1, 2, 3. Dry....  and on as usual.

But this time, as I watched my children laughing and splashing, pouring cup into cup, and rolling out their washcloths with make believe rolling pins, it struck me.

This is it.
This is your life, your real married life, with your real children. Now.

That future life you imagined all those years ago? It's been here for a while now.  That rainbow you saw across the meadow of coming years? Those storytimes, bathtimes, laughtertimes, lovetimes? That's now. You're in it. You're under it. The sunshine and the rain that fall on you in so many ways each day that make that rainbow.  This moment with these innocent, lively, trusting children is the pot of gold.  If you don't see it now, you never will.  Because this is it.

So if you find yourself like I do at times, being driven forward through your day's routine and shuffling your children along in your strife to "get this done" so you can move onto the next thing and then "get that done" so you can move onto the next, then hopefully, by the grace of God, you can be stopped dead in your tracks. Dead enough to see those bright little eyes right in front of you, and gaze at them in wonder, and realize, "this is it." There's no next thing.  There's nothing better in this life than this.  This moment, this bathtime, is made for you and for them. This is, as they say, the stuff life is made of. It's to enjoy, not get through. These are sons and daughters of God growing up before your very eyes, unique and incomparable gifts, made in His image, and also miraculously procreatively made in the image of your husband, the man God has given you to care for in this life, and yourself.

Yes, there is suffering and there is joy. There is rain and there is sunshine. And when they come together in just the right way, then is made visible the seven vibrant colors that were in the light all along.  Sometimes we just don't see it... because we're in it.

Too Many Straws In My Milkshake-- Interview with Rachel Jankovic

 Rachel Jankovic  started using the phrase "too many straws in my milkshake"  as a description of feeling like you don't have anything left to give because it's early in the morning and you're already feeling sucked dry.

"At our house we always find it better to think it's funny: too many straws in my milkshake, became a saying for us, because it's a more cheerful way of looking at it than, I feel wasted right now..."

And if you've read this, you know her desire is to honor God and lean on Him through all the joys and trials of the vocation of motherhood.

She  warns about cleaning the house, but leaving the hearts cluttered, if your whole motive is to make sure that you look like the best mother/baker/cleaner/whatever.

I really like that she often says, "And I was talking with my husband about this, and he was helping me see..."

The above quotes are from these video clips. I really enjoyed listening to them while I was working in the kitchen. And great for busy moms: they're just little snippets, about six minutes long.

Motherhood & Work: Too Many Straws in My Milkshake
Cleaning House and Cleaning Hearts

The Vocation of Motherhood
The Conservative Tendency to Over-romanticize Motherhood
How to Instill Loyalty in Your Children

Can we get two?

This morning Lucy, my "big girl" at 3 1/2 years old, said "maybe when we get the brand new baby in March we should get two, 'cause we don't just want only one baby." Hmmm... Although I think saying we're going to "get" a new baby slightly trivializes the part my rickety old body will be playing in this process I do see her point. Imagine how dull life will be for me in spring with only one baby, one 1 year old, one 2 year old, and one 3 year old!

Whew. I think I'll just focus on the ONE that's on the way ;-)

You are JUST a mother!

I stumbled upon this article the other day, and wanted to share it.  It reminds me of G.K. Chesterton's quotes about mothering.

“You’re a stay-at-home mom? What do you DO all day?”

... "Yes, my wife is JUST a mother. JUST. She JUST brings forth life into the universe, and she JUST shapes and molds and raises those lives. She JUST manages, directs and maintains the workings of the household, while caring for children who JUST rely on her for everything. She JUST teaches our twins how to be human beings, and, as they grow, she will JUST train them in all things, from morals, to manners, to the ABC’s, to hygiene, etc. She is JUST my spiritual foundation and the rock on which our family is built. She is JUST everything to everyone. And society would JUST fall apart at the seams if she, and her fellow moms, failed in any of the tasks I outlined.

Yes, she is just a mother. Which is sort of like looking at the sky and saying, “hey, it’s just the sun.”

If you'd like to read the rest, you can find it here:
You're a stay-at-home mom? What do you do all day?  by Matt Walsh

Blog Post Recommended - Gel Pen Faith

This post from the Femina blog  encouraged me once again in my vocation as a mother and homemaker. It is a good reminder of our priorities in normal, ordinary, daily life.  Below is an excerpt, but I think the whole post is worth reading.

"When push comes to shove and it is either the house or the kids, God chooses the kids, and He tells me to. When it is the laundry all done or the kids all loved, it had better be the kids."

"Of course God is honored when I am combining joy with closet organizing. Laughter with clean floors. Gratitude with getting all the dishes done. But you know what? If something has got to go around our house, it better not be my attitude. Because that is the one thing that God actually told me to keep track of."

Well Put

I just happened upon this article this morning and thought it a clearly laid out list of wise and practical points on training young children.

Homemade Kindness

Just because they're my children does that mean I shouldn't say "Please" or "Thank you" to them?
Just because I'm their mother, does that mean I have the right to be short-tempered and rude to them?
Do I speak more kindly and patiently to a visiting niece, nephew, or neighbor child than to my own? 

I have acted many times as if I assumed a "yes" to each of those questions, but I am purposing, by God's grace and with His help, to be more aware of my tone and attitude in speaking to my children, and praying that I learn to be as kind, tenderhearted, and forgiving with them, for Christ's sake, as I would endeavor to be to any other person I encounter.

There is a passage from C. S. Lewis' The Four Loves that often comes to my mind on this subject -

"We hear a great deal about the rudeness of the rising generation... but in fact I have been far more impressed by the bad manners of parents to children than by those of children to parents.

....[Parents'] ruthless interruptions, flat contradictions, ridicule of things the young take seriously.... provide an easy answer to the question, 'Why are they always out? Why do they like every other house better than their home?' Who does not prefers ability to barbarism?"

Lewis goes on to explain how people excuse their bad manners with,  

".... [O]f course we don't want company manners at home. We're a happy family. We can say anything to one another here. No one minds. We all understand,"  to which Lewis explains, "Once again it is so nearly true yet so fatally wrong. Affection is an affair of old clothes, and ease, of the unguarded moment, of liberties which would be ill-bred if we took them with strangers.  But old clothes are one thing: to wear the same shirt till it stank would be another.

The more intimate the occasion [at home every day], the less the formalization; but not therefore the less need of courtesy.  On the contrary, Affection at its best practices a courtesy which is incomparably more subtle, sensitive, and deep than the public kind.... 

Affection at its best wishes neither to wound nor to humiliate nor to dominate....
You may tease and hoax and banter.... You can do anything with the right tone and in the right moment - the tone and moment which are not intended to, and will not, hurt. The better the Affection the more unerringly it knows which these are (every love has its art of love)."  (from pgs 42, 43, 44)

The little people that are growing up in my house, under my charge for a time, are God's children first before they are mine.  My sons and daughters will grow up to be men and women and will, God willing, have families of their own.  Much of the sensitivity and gentleness they will have toward their own spouses and children they will hopefully have learned at home. 

"She opens her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness." Proverbs 31:26

...The Lord Added to Their Numbers

The church of God is growing!

Congratulations to Leah, one of the authors of this blog, on the birth of your son. 

Here is a prayer for their family as well as, all the homes blessed with new little ones.

"With joy and thanksgiving we praise You out of the fullness of our grateful hearts that you have gladdened our home and life with this newborn babe.

We know that this child is a gift of Your bountiful hand. Grant us grace and wisdom to bring up this precious soul in the knowledge and understanding of Your Word, which makes us wise unto salvation. Watch over him with Your tenderest care and continued grace until the day we bring this little one to the font of Holy Baptism.

As surely You will endow our child with faith and strengthen him in spirit, so too endow our child with a healthy body, and strengthen and preserve him according to Your good and gracious will.  Grant that our child may grow in favor with You and bring sunshine and joy into our hearts and our home.

Keep us all in Your grace, forgiving us daily our sins, and filling our souls with peace.  You are our hiding place. And now to You be the praise, glory, and thanksgiving, for this precious gift, this day and forever; through Jesus Christ, who is the Friend of children and the Savior of all. 

Amen"

Lutheran Book of Prayer

Diary Dust

Remember keeping a diary?  Well, maybe you weren't the type, but I was.  In ANOTHER LIFE!

Yeah, I have five full cute flowery books called "journals" written in a beautifully scripted hand, of all my thoughts, impressions, memories, and chronicled special events... from when I was single.  And after I was married? Well, there's about half of one cute flowery journal filled up with thoughts from the first few months.  And after that?  Well, then came babies, and I switched over to "baby books."  My firstborn, a son, has a beautiful old fashioned large hardback journal with entire pages written up on his first words, first teeth, first roll-over, first toy, first attempt at crawling, at walking, first tumble down the stairs, and even a cute little Ziploc bag with an adorable little lock of curly blond hair from his first haircut.  Oh, and taped in portraits of him at six months, nine months, a year, and eighteen months, taken at the local Sears portrait studio.  He was a pretty cute lad, I must say.  I know because I just found his "book" in a large bin of keepsakes while organizing my closet last week.

It was like finding a time capsule from another universe, another woman, who lived a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

In this bin my second child has a baby book too, only without the lock of hair.  My third has maybe half a book filled out. No details, just facts.  My fourth has a book alright.  It's got his name on the cover... and not a single jot or tittle inside.  My two daughters after him? I didn't even try to fool myself.

Life has changed. I have changed. Or rather, God, by the simple yet complicated organic process of the changing needs and demands of this spread of growing children given to my husband and me, is changing me and my plans. 

My children receive love and care, just not in the same romantic way I used to dream of giving them, and tried to give them.  Certain romantic ideals are wonderful in their season, and what would life be without them, I ask you?  But God grows us up.  In his way. And I for one, am at the point where I've got to move with the seasons just to stay alive now.  Necessity has programmed my priorities into different avenues than they once were.  I didn't try to make changes.  They just happened to me.

Now, all you lovely mothers out there faithfully keeping baby books, don't get me wrong.  If I wasn't clutching for survival to accomplish the basics of cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, instructing, training, and forcing piano practice times in various stages to a range of six (going on seven) children, I could totally see myself up in my daughters' well dusted room carefully taping her last work of art into her fourth book... instead of secretly throwing it in the trash when she wasn't looking, only to realize that the trash is full and needs to be emptied, and that tomorrow's trash pick up day, and that my son better remember to take them to the road without my telling him this time, and while we're at it..... Oh, sorry.  I'm getting carried away.  See why I don't have time to write in the baby's book

Or at least get some kind of a decent blog post up on some kind of a regular basis right? 

Yeah, all I need is a housekeeper, a maid, a tutor, a governess, and a nurse, and I could do all the things I really want to do.  Right?

"Woman and Children," by Elizabeth Boott Duveneck

Wait a minute.  I am.
Doing what I really want to do.
Things have taken on different levels of importance in my life now, especially as I have learned, and am learning, to take in stride the losing of my time for some things and the re-diverting of it into other things, and by daily surrender to the revealed will of God in my day to day life, I can now have a different kind of diary.
I can just tell my children this, when they ask about their baby book (not that they even care) -

"You yourselves are [my] letter, written on [my] heart, known and read by everyone. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts."

2 Corinthians 3: 2, 3 

Yeah, I think they'll like that even better.  So do I.

(Not to say that my reading through those 2 1/2 baby books last week wasn't fun. And precious. And it probably will be to the future wife of my son.  It's just, well, you know.  Sigh.)

A Word to Busy Mothers

This is a poem from a book entitled "Garden of Grace" by Mrs. Silas Bowman. One of my good friends sent it to me (Thanks Christal :-) and since it both convicted and encouraged me I thought I'd share it here.

A Word to Busy Mothers

Since you are a busy mother, you have much to do.

Things are often in a rush and you are often in a stew.

Meals to fix, clothes to wash, and dirty floor to sweep,

Little tots and babies, too, to care for and to keep.

Garden must be tended; there is sewing to be done;

Certain deadlines must be met; you are always on the run.

Though this work is all important, keep it in it’s place.

Never let it shut out God or stop His flow of grace.

While you are hanging out the wash or ironing with care,

Still your thoughts to meditate and breathe a silent prayer.

Read a portion of God’s Word while rocking babies to sleep;

Count your blessings while you work although you feel to weep.

Sing about His goodness as you pick, prepare, and can;

Speak about His praises and His mercies to mere man.

Tell the children of His love while tucking them in bed;

Thank Him daily that His hand has clothed them, warmed and fed.

In the evening leave your work and worry in God’s care;

‘Ere you start another day prepare yourself in prayer,

And God will surely bless your day and give you grace to do

All those things that must be done and always fall on you.

Mrs Silas Bowman

Toddler Instruction

Hmmm. I guess toddlers should learn to read before they learn to peel stickers...

Nice and Clean

A friend of mine gave me this...

Dear friend we need more...

Since we used it all in one bath!

(I could almost wager I now have the cleanest two year old ever,
well at least for the next 10 seconds)

Why Have Children?

I came across a great article in World Magazine the other night.  It is called Metaphysically Deceived, by Mindy Belz.  In it she quotes a small passage from a wonderful 1993 essay by theologian and ethicist Gilbert Meilaender called "The Meaning of the Presence of Children," which I then found and read in its entirety, and I'm so glad I did.  (For some reason I cannot create a link to it because it was a PDF download, but you can type the article name into Google and download the PDF for yourself if you're interested), and I think it is well worth reading.
It is so good that I just have to put up this (rather lengthy) excerpt:

 The Meaning of the Presence of Children, by Gilbert Meilaender -

 There is, I claimed at the outset, a certain pathos in the question, Why have children? 

It suggests a loss of spontaneous confidence in life and an impoverishment of spirit. This does not mean that such a question is unreasonable, particularly for those whose circumstances make hope difficult, though we may doubt whether they are the ones always most likely to raise the question. In any case, I do not seek to judge the difficulties facing any particular married couple or their special circumstances; rather, I seek to reflect upon the social significance of our attitude toward the presence of children. 

The formation of a family is most truly human, a sign of health, when it springs from what Gabriel Marcel called “an experience of plenitude.” To conceive, bear, and rear a child ought to be an affirmation and a recognition: affirmation of the good of life that we ourselves were given; recognition that this life bears its own creative power to which we should be faithful....

The desire to have children is an expression of a deeply humanistic impulse to be faithful to the creative power of the life that is mysteriously ours....

 But granting all such provisos, there is still a sense in which planning alone cannot capture the “experience of plenitude” from which procreation, as its best, springs. There is, after all, no necessity that human beings exist—or that we ourselves be. That something rather than nothing exists is a mystery that lies buried in the heart of God, whose creative power and plenitude of being are the ground of our life. That life should have come into existence is in no way our doing. Within this life we can exercise a modest degree of control, but we deceive ourselves if we forget the mystery of creation that grounds our being.  To form a family cannot, therefore, be only an act of planning and control—unless we are metaphysically deceived. It must also be an act of faith and hope, what Marcel termed “the exercise of a fundamental generosity.” 

To the extent that we moderns have understood the family as a problem to be mastered, and not a mystery to be explored faithfully, we have quite naturally come to adopt a certain attitude toward our children. They have been produced, not out of any spontaneous confidence in life, but as the result of our own planning. We are, therefore, tempted to suppose that we must— and can—become their protectors, the guarantors of their future. Paradoxically, having lost the metaphysical underpinnings of procreation as a participation in the Creator’s own gracious self- spending, having lost much of the real significance of the family, we make of it more than it is.

In love a man and a woman turn from themselves toward each other. They might, however, miss the call of creative fidelity to life and be forever content to turn toward each other alone, to turn out from themselves no more than that. But in the child, their union, as a union, quite naturally turns outward. They are not permitted to think of themselves as individuals who come together only for their own fulfillment. In the child they are given a task. Their union plays its role in a larger history, and it becomes part of their vocation to contribute to the ongoing life of a people....

In many respects this is the most fundamental task of parents: transmission of a way of life. When the son of the ancient Israelite asked, “‘What does this mean?,” his father told again the story of the mighty acts of God, the story of their common life as a people....  Parenthood is not just biological begetting. It is also history—a vocation to nurture the next generation, to initiate it into the human inheritance of knowledge and obligation....

And until we rediscover the inner meaning of the venture of parenthood as a mystery to be lived rather than a problem to be controlled, we will be ill equipped to deal with the ills we confront."