It’s become tradition for me to set aside a couple of hours toward the end of each year to scroll through the year’s photos on my phone, clear the clutter, and save the moments that defined our life as a family. If I’m really on top of things, I’ll turn those memories into a physical album and add it to the stack we keep in our living room. This year, as I scanned my camera roll, I had to stop at a photo Chip took of Crew sometime last spring, out on the boat, a day of fishing ahead of them. The picture shows Crew, his body bent over the boat’s edge, his face hovering close to the water. I’m thinking the sun must have been directly overhead because the majority of the snapshot is Crew’s reflection painted in the shallow water, his wide boyish grin staring back at him—at us.
Have you ever looked at a photo and felt as though it held the whole of a person? Exactly as you see them. Exactly as you pray they see themselves? Crew, our youngest, turned 6 this year. I’ve learned to savor this age, this sacred season of childhood when kids wear curiosity and confidence like their birthright. His body language tells me he’s thinking about jumping in. Like so many times before, I witness the way he gives himself over to a sort of wild love for adventure whenever nature’s at his feet. His eyes, though, are where I pause the longest. They tell me that he is content, completely, with what and who he sees.
"...he is content, completely, with what and who he sees."
For a parent, this season introduces a million tensions at once. You know there’s so much ahead for your kids, so much growth, so much knowledge. But at the same time, you see them already brimming with everything you could ever want for them: courage, joy, belief. In this season, it feels impossible to imagine they’ll ever outgrow who they are right now. Unlikely, you tell yourself, that they’ll ever become anything other than wholeheartedly them.
But the impossible can become possible. As a mother of five, I’ve watched how the weight of things can shift for my kids as they get older. How it shifted for me, too. I think this happens to all of us, actually. For some, it happens slowly. For others, it feels like overnight. Either way, over time, the profile of the person staring back at you gets complicated. Mostly because we start to let in other people’s views, too—their expectations, their assumptions. We start to see ourselves plus who we think other people see; or worse, who we think other people want to see. Or, we simply start to notice that other people are watching, and the idea that eyes are on us can change everything. Courage becomes harder to find. We learn that curiosity can lead to failure. That optimism isn’t always free from disappointment. And in moments when I’ve lost sight of myself, that’s when I’ll feel shadows closing in.
Those shadows we all grow into. It’s the place our mind goes where insecurities and shame and fear of failing hold court. It’s the place where we’ll withdraw or shrink up and steal away. Where we might think we’ve reached safety—but never for long. And never for the better.
And while we’ll willingly retreat to some shadows, others we can get caught in. As a parent, as a spouse, as a friend, but also as an individual, I’m learning that I need to be equally aware of the shadow I carry and the one I cast. When it comes to the person my kids are slowly unveiling, I don’t want the life I’ve chosen and the choices I’ve made—good or bad—to pigeonhole how they lead their own. I want to be close but never overshadow.
In a world that can make it easy to lose sight of yourself, I want my kids, especially, to know how to find their way back. And when they look at the person staring back at them, I want them to know how to see—really see—themselves exactly as they were made to be.
And so, when I look at that picture of Crew, I can’t help but feel grateful for the light. Without the sun breaking through, there’d be no reflection mirrored in the water. And without truth to lend light to untruth, there’d be nothing real to cling to.
Reflections, by their very nature, need light to exist. So that’s the best we can offer Crew, and all of our kids: a spot beneath the sun. More moments for them to see themselves beyond our shadow. Beyond their own shadows that inevitably creep in. I can’t control what may cause them to shrink up just like I can’t stop my own instinct to make myself small—but I can point them back to light when they’ve wandered too far, back to their God-given purpose. For Chip and me, that looks like encouragement and accountability. It looks like applauding moments of authenticity and being unbending in moments of unbelief. And it looks like quiet mornings out on the boat, waiting for the light to break through the shadows, expectant for what it has to show us.
