Why My Husband and I are Thinking About Throwing Away Our “Storybook” Life

The Joy (and an Explanation of the Pain)

So I’m going out on a limb here. Like really, really far. What I have to say in this post may ruffle some feathers. While that is totally not my intent, I know that people often take others’ personal convictions as indictments on their own. My purpose is to share my heart as we pray through an unraveling of ideals, definitions of success, and a lifestyle in exchange for something (we believe is) better. But not better in the we hit the lottery kind of way. The we are living out the lives God has called us to kind of way.

We are a thirty somethings, African-American couple with 2.5 kids living in the burbs. We both started from pretty humble beginnings. I’m not talking Boyz N The Hood humble. Think Everybody Hates Chris: Texas Edition. We both grew up with two hard working parents, doing everything they could to get us to better. And that they did.  By many accounts—we’ve made it! We’ve accomplished the American dream. But that’s not the whole story.

Now let’s pause here to address the usage of the word “storybook”. I use this word because it has an interesting level of accuracy that could easily be misconstrued or lost on some. So let me make plain what it means here. Most people are familiar with classic storybook tales like Cinderella, Snow White, or Sleeping Beauty. As an adult, it occurred to me that these beautiful tales also carry dark and heavy detours and incessant, determined villains. There are people that cheer on the protagonist and people that silently root for their failure. Make no mistake. Our beautiful story has been entangled with hardship and hurt and epic battle scenes that would hurt just to watch. I hope as we get to know each other better, we can sit and talk over a warm, honey soaked cup of tea about how our marriage was shattered and rebuilt into a beautiful mosaic that stands today. But for now, take my word that while I will never omit the truth of pain in my marriage, I will also never downplay the goodness of God and how we don’t look like what we’ve been through! Amen!

The Dilemma

My husband and I keep coming back the idea that we’d someday get to the top of the ladder we’ve been climbing– hoping to take in the sun and glory at the peak of a life we’d built, only to realize, we’d climbed the wrong ladder. We’d sewn the wrong seeds. We’d mistakenly left the wrong legacies.

My dad always says, “Leigh-Ann (my middle name), lessons are mostly caught by not taught to our kids.” In other words, what sticks with your kids more than what you tell them is what you do in front of them. Ouch! While my husband and I try to tell our kids the importance of enjoying the little things in life, we are constantly showering them with really big things for the sake of them having more than we did growing up. Or telling them how important family is but family time (in non quarantine circumstances) is so limited or placed on the back-burner due to over booked schedules, late nights at the office, and all the other crap we put on our plates that pulls us away from our center. Are we practicing what we are preaching? Ouch again.

There are three constant tuggings on our hearts, pulling us away from this life we’ve worked hard to build. Time. Culture. Legacy. Let me explain.

Time is Ticking

Because my husband is that self-starting warrior, go-getter type, a typical week for him is getting up around 4 AM to go workout before work, working a full day and then getting home around 7:30 or 8 PM just in time for dinner with our oldest or to tuck her into bed and say prayers. More nights than not, he misses seeing our little guy in the evenings as he goes to bed at 7 PM like clockwork nightly.  At least once a week, he hangs back in the mornings to do breakfast with us and load the kids into the car for school drop off. Always a pleasant little treat.

But as we stood knee deep in quarantine, we realized how silly the tradeoff of striving to gain more stuff for time raising our family TOGETHER is. If I didn’t mention it before, I am a stay at home mama. I have been since the birth of our oldest. I take my role seriously, and don’t waiver in the calling to do so. It’s easy to feel like these were my two children that my husband was ‘helping’ me with and not OUR children that we both need to prioritize and invest in at a very high level. It’s just not possible at the pace my husband has been working. I always say to him, you are too good of a dad to be a ‘weekend dad’. Being at home all day, everyday during quarantine allowed him to see how much he has been missing and how heavy the parenting load really is day in and day out. We only get one opportunity to parent our children through childhood giving them the tools they need for a firm foundation and THIS IS IT. We are searching for how we can experience more balance and less sacrifice. Tug.

Culture: We “Made It” To Where and Is It To the Detriment of Our Kids?

I struggle to articulate this one the most. It’s not about over protecting or helicopter parenting. Although, I know it will be viewed this way by many. It’s about maintaining age-appropriate innocence and giving our children the time they need to fortify an unshakable foundation without having to re-pour the cement everyday when they get home. One goal for us has always been to expose our children to the finer things and rich experiences. Experiences that will allow them to thrive and connect in circles that may not be expected to. We want our kids to be well-cultured, well-spoken, and even well-traveled. We’ve been okay with our babies being in classrooms where no one else looks like them because we justify it with, “we are preparing them for how the real world is” or “this is where the best schools are”. But is that really what we end up preparing them for? We forget that the very exposure we end up limiting is the very thing that gave us our grit and grain and spiritual anchor that marked generations before us.

My husband and I look around and see the uphill battle we are fighting when nearly everything we are teaching at home, is countered instead of supported in the culture in which we live. My pastor always teaches how exposure to “better” leads to chronic discontentment. I have succumbed to this many times and my children are not beyond its reach either. It’s like having a perfectly well running, not outdated but not new anymore car. Then, you hop in your girlfriend’s new SUV, innocently heading to a fun girls’ night out. Her car has all the new bells and whistles and that euphoria inducing new car smell. Suddenly, you feel like you need a heated steering wheel, a car capable of self-parking, and a rear center console that doubles as a cooler. It’s funny but most of us have been there! Could it be that if we lived in a simpler way, that we could all make more room to focus on what matters most? Could our striving to expose our kids to the best and more be to their detriment, churning out teens and adults that battle with comparison, anxiety, depression and discontentment?  Is this the life that my husband works tirelessly for us to have? Tug, tug.

Legacy

What are we really building for our kids and our grandkids? Have we been building an inheritance or a legacy? An inheritance is almost solely in reference to something physical being left for someone. While legacy can also refer to something physical like wealth, it also refers to something much broader and more far reaching into the soul. We want to leave to our children more than just an inheritance of nice stuff (and good looks wink, wink). We want to leave a legacy of godliness, good character and a willingness to do the hard things when the easy things make more worldly sense. With limited time and constant exposure, we feel like we are boxing the wind, fighting for the hearts and minds of our kids. Tug again.

Conclusion

You won’t find any finite answers here to resolve the internal conflict we are facing. Or some silver bullet parenting tip that reveals an illuminated path for every parent to walk with guaranteed results. But what we have resolved to do is take a long, hard look at the way things were and how we want them to be different moving forward. I can tell you, after some tough conversations, lots of honesty ladled with heaps of love on top and a few tears, my husband and I are on the same page. We want these little arrows we chose to bring into this world to be shot into darkness and light it on fire. We want to spend more time together as a family. We want to raise our kids culturally counter, and we want to leave them an eternal legacy. We both truly believe that “Children are a gift from the Lord, they are a reward from Him. Children born to a young man are like arrows in a warrior’s hands. How joyful is the man whose quiver is full of them! He will not be put to shame when he confronts his accusers at the city gates”. Psalm 127:3-5

The one thing we are certain of is that we have to, first be doing the hard and sacrificial things for the sake of teaching our children what it looks like to strive for a life that gets a thunderous, heavenly applause and a resounding, “Well done my good and faithful servant”.