On Fear and Parenting

Today we celebrated Lensbaby's fifth birthday.  Lensbaby is the name of the mom-tographers group I'm a part of.  They are responsible for many, many of the photo ops from which I've posted pictures in the last year and a half. 

We celebrated at a splash park in a neighboring city.  

 

This splash park used to give me such intense anxiety before I had 3 kids.  

 

I felt certain that if I looked down at my camera for even a second, someone would snatch one of my kids and be gone before I looked back up. 

It is truly remarkable how quickly your mind can recall every Lifetime Original movie about kidnapping, replaying them instantly in your mind merely seconds after you realize your kid is not where you thought he/she would be.

It is not my mind's most helpful skill.

But I was realizing today that I didn't feel that way -- or at least, not nearly as much as before.

Of course my awareness is heightened in a park like this -- open to anybody, no fence, with a few dozen kids and a parking lot very close by.  How could it not be. 

But what surprised me was the lack of paralyzing fear about it.  

 

The kids play together.  They stay close together, and pretty close to me.  They are, at least for now, a cohesive little group.

I don't know if it was that, or the fact that I have had to let go of some control issues over the past year, having three kids.  

There are personal limitations I just have to acknowledge on a daily basis.  I cannot get them all the sippy cup they want at the moment they want it.

 

I can't spare them the despair suffered while waiting for a turn with whatever plastic toy is the darling of the day.

 

I can't hold all three of them when they're all three upset or hurting at the exact same moment.  

But that's ok.  I have begun to accept it -- this helplessness every parent has to come to terms with during child-rearing.  You cannot control every circumstance all the time.  

Heck, you can't even control every circumstance some of the time.  

Yet, the kids are ok.  The momentary despair they experience on a day-to-day basis doesn't destroy them.

And despite my trying my very hardest to care for their every need, my limitations are real--and the kids are not destroyed by those either.

It's as if they're in someone else's hands altogether.

Someone bigger than me, whose love and power is not limited and whose patience is never exhausted.

It's as if they're safe.  And a peace that passes understanding is with me.

While I snap photos of my three precious babies. In this splash park with no fence.