Today was supposed to be a perfect day. My husband and I dropped the kids off with their grandparents overnight and we headed up to Lake Erie for a sunny day of lounging on rafts in the lake. This truly might be my favorite way to spend a sunny day, and to get to do it without monitoring our kids near the water with a wide open day ahead felt like pure luxury.
However, as it sometimes happens, our plans went a bit sideways. As we approached the exit for the park, it was blocked off by police: the parking lots were full and they weren’t allowing any more vehicles in. So, we navigated through unfamiliar neighborhoods until we finally found a place to park so we could walk to the beach.
In the blazing sun of 90 degree heat, we took on the mile walk with armloads of heavy things, including a 10 pound anchor, bottles of water, and a cooler full of ice. It was brutal, but we knew we’d be glad we had done it once we hit the water.
When we finally arrived at the lake, the water was perfect. We floated blissfully for close to an hour in the lake, tied to that heavy anchor… until the first big rainstorm came in over the lake, cutting our day even shorter. The wind blew, the sand flew and this peaceful hour turned into a frenzied hustle back to our vehicle.
With traffic backed up for nearly an hour as what seemed to be the entire population of Northeast Ohio made their exodus, we chose instead to sit under the pavilion watching the powerful waves crash against the now empty beach, the water spoke to my soul the way it so often does. The sunshine and the gentle waves from just minutes prior were overtaken by dark clouds and whitecaps crashing against the shore. It was beautiful and impressive.
Life can change in a moment, in the snap of your fingers. Absolute serenity can turn to chaos and struggle, rest can turn into toil, good can turn into bad. We all know this, we’ve all lived this, but it’s not so often you get to experience both in a day.
Colleen Cook works full-time as the Director of Operations at Vinyl Marketing in Ashland, where she resides with her husband Mike and three young daughters. She’s an insatiable extrovert who enjoys finding reasons to gather people.
As parents are prone to do, I began to think about my children since we were spending the day apart. This week was a roller coaster of extreme fun and smiles and deep fear and discomfort with our kids. One of our children had to do something very hard, and it grieved me intensely to guide her as she journeyed through it.
It’s in our nature to want to protect our kids from any harm that comes their way, but it’s an impossible task. Sometimes, even when we check the radar, we can’t see the storm on the horizon. Life throws curveballs no one was expecting all the time.
My knee-jerk reaction is to hover, trying to shoulder the burden of whatever pain lies ahead, like a concrete wall against crashing waves. But what my kids really need, what all kids really need, is to be prepared for the sun as well as the storms, whenever they’re so lucky to experience either.
Author Glennon Doyle once said, “I don’t want my kids to avoid fires. I want them to know that they are fireproof and can survive hard things.” This sentiment has stuck with me for years, and has heavily informed the way I parent my children.
However, in conversation with another friend with children recently, we realized that it’s close, but not fully complete. It’s not that we’re fireproof, because sometimes we get burned. Parenting is about teaching our children how to prepare for the journey through the fire, and how to heal their burns when they’re on the other side.
Author Tim Elmore has shared a similar sentiment, writing, “Prepare the child for the path, not the path for the child.” The road of life has twists and turns, is smooth and rocky, and we don’t ever quite know what lies ahead. But, preparing ourselves and our children for the path ahead is about expecting the unexpected, finding joy even in sorrow and trusting that nothing so good or so bad lasts forever.
