It’s Spring Break. Before my daughter entered school, it was just another week in March. Now it’s so much more. Extra time together as a family. Mornings to sleep in. The marker of one more quarter remaining in the school year. By the sheer nature of the title, it’s a taste of winter vanishing and the new season beginning.

Lifeless barren twigs resting all winter, show signs of new growth. The brown remnants of last year’s perennials melt into the dirt, but below new life pushes through. A pruned rose bush resembling lanky toothpicks plunged into the ground is decorated with buds waiting for their moment to say hello.

Springtime: it’s a promise of renewal.

For me, spring is energizing. Life is full of excitement, challenges, and opportunities for growth. But winter has a tendency to overstay its welcome. Ever felt like that? Prolonged difficulty. Unknown direction. Unanswered prayers. Overwhelming circumstances. Never-ending schedules.

I’m one who likes to check off items on my To-Do list and bask in my sense of accomplishment. Unfortunately, life doesn’t always afford that luxury and parenting isn’t so neat and tidy either. Parenting is the greatest challenge and most fulfilling position I could ever imagine. But often our instructions feel like the uninvited guest who lingers when our repetitions playback like a recording.

Listen!

I didn’t hear, “excuse me.”

No, you cannot wear sandals in the winter … it’s freezing cold.

Don’t be surprised and complain over doing chores … you know it’s a weekly event.

I asked you to go clean your room, not go play.

Play nicely with others.

Don’t interrupt me when I am on the phone.

Yes, parenting can feel like a long winter at times. But there is hope!! Spring is coming. Underneath all the struggle, the god-given beauty is germinating its new growth. It just hasn’t come out yet to greet us, but it’s in there …

Think about it–did we learn the first time around? I know I didn’t. My mother’s continual reference to my bedroom floor’s carpet being multi-colored from all the clothes was a drab winter for her I’m sure. But somewhere along the way, spring showed up. Today, our bedroom carpet is only one color.

Throw out the To-Do list. Just take each day as it comes. Spring will come.

A tantalizing smell. An unmistakable sound. A vivid scene. A memorized feeling.

I recently made a pot roast with mashed potatoes and homemade gravy for dinner. The aroma of the roast simmering immediately brought me back to Sundays growing up. We came home from church and walked into the house filled with such aroma.

“That was my favorite meal growing up.” I said. “I tell you that every time I make a roast, don’t I?” My family nodded politely.

It just takes a speck of familiarity to reminisce.

When my daughter and I are cheek to cheek, it evokes fond memories of her as a baby cradling her head against my face as I rocked her.

When the song, “We Are Family” is played, I cannot help but remember how as teenagers in the Philippines, my sister and I used the song to memorize our Tagalog language vowel techniques.

As I am now reading Sisterchicks in Gondolas! by Robin Jones Gunn, the scenes she paints of Venice take me directly back to the year we spent our anniversary in the enchanted floating island city. Our walks at night along the canals were romantic with the lights glistening off surrounding water and beautiful live music echoing the corridors. The following day, plentiful pigeons in San Marco square encircled our daughter, while we laughed and videotaped the playful incident.

Such fond memories.

As parents, what memories do we intentionally create? Making memories doesn’t require money or extravagant trips. Memories can be created from the every day little things, traditions, or simple family outings.

What will cause our children to reminisce when they become adults? As parents, we paint the scenes upon our children’s hearts. Take time to etch the backdrop and landscapes into our lives so that fond images imprint the canvas.

Leftovers in their less visible form are called memories. Stored in the refrigerator of the mind and the cupboard of the heart. ~ Thomas Fuller

“You just don’t want me to have any fun!” “This isn’t going to help me.” “Why do I have to do this?”

Kids tend to dislike discipline and balk at our parental instruction and guidance. It’s human nature. The value of learning responsibility by cleaning their room is missed, as in their minds it translates to missing out on more free time to play. Consequences aren’t seen as necessary lessons, but punishment for the sake of punishment.

I remember as a child hearing my parents say, “This will hurt me more than it will hurt you,” and thinking I don’t think so! Or “This is for your own good.” Says who?

Children cannot fully understand the reasons for our parenting choices … that is until they become parents. Their minds struggle to grasp the idea that it is for their benefit and growth. Instead they complain of the unfairness.

At times, I see myself viewing life from a child’s perspective when it comes to my relationship with God. He lacks full explanations. He works rather slow at times. His path is sketchy. His ways are a bit quirky. And life doesn’t always feel fair.

I don’t always readily see the value of walking a dimly lit path searching for something I can’t quite put my finger on. I haven’t read yet Donald Miller’s book, Searching for God knows what, but I love the title. We all are on a journey searching for something … but we don’t always know what that is. Maybe God hasn’t lit the path clearly yet, or that we’re just beginning the discovery of what is missing.

When it comes right down to it, I realize that to not see what’s ahead is to understand what is most important. The final destination should not be the focus. What I learn along the way is key. God’s faint path may not provide future clarity, but it develops growth in me when I rely on Him for guidance.

So the next time our children grumble from a perspective so different from ours, sneak a quick look at our own perception of God at work in us.

This is the week for love. Valentine’s Day is characteristically the day for romance, but often stress escorts the day as well. The florists hike their prices into oblivion, restaurants have no openings for those who didn’t make reservations early, and a husband agonizes over his lack of ESP to know what to buy to meet or exceed his wife’s expectation. Consequently, many forgo acknowledging the day as commercialism overshadows the reason to celebrate.

I’m not one to insist my husband pay the 200% inflated price for a dozen roses, he lavish me with extravagant gifts, or expect an elaborate fanfare. But I do like having a day to remember to take time out for nurturing our relationship.

Life is busy. Schedules are full. The demands from children naturally push the luxury of dates into the background. Sometimes … a reminder is necessary.

I love the idea that this week millions of couples will go on dates and take time for each other. But I’m saddened that it is reduced to an annual event. A decade ago, one million children were involved in a divorce each year. Now, half of all children will witness their parent’s marriage break up and one-fourth will witness their parents’ second marriage break up.

Our marriages must be priority.

As much as I hate the commercialism of Valentine’s Day, I love the idea. Love. Romance. Uninterupted time together. Concepts just fading these days.

Rather than refusing to indulge commercialism, make a fuss over your marriage! Plan a day this week to spend time together (without children), talking about anything (except children), to cultivate a relationship that is essential to our children.

Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads which sew people together through the years. ~Simone Signoret

Information overload! Ever been there? Your head feels like a full laundry basket after two-weeks — not one more square inch remains empty. Straggling shirt sleeves overflow the edges. Socks mash to the size of dollar bill. When the crammed basket is tipped over, jiggling and shaking is necessary. Onto the floor plops the heap like a formed jello mold. No dead air.

That’s my brain right now. Ideas, information, creativity, angles, perspectives, instruction, insight, and thoughts are racing through my mind like clothes in a spin cycle. I returned Sunday night from my four-day Writing for the Soul writer’s conference in Colorado Springs, Colorado held at the Broadmoor.

The conference overflowed with invaluable information, amazing speakers, applicable teaching, and editors. At the end of each 14-hour day, my mind whirled with new ideas.

It’s four days later now and I still haven’t digested all the information. I woke up the other morning with my first thought in mid-sentence of how I can tweak things, rearrange, and package my book. Clearly the laundry basket is overflowing!

Parenting is a bit like this for me as well. Just when I think I’ve got it down, the rules change. I rack my brain for a new angle or perspective, or get creative to find unconventional ways to teach our daughter the lesson.

When Hannah was just a toddler, I would try to sit her down and give her the talk of all the whys and why not’s. Of course, at that young age, her attention span waned quickly. Get it out quicker next time! Get to the point! Now that she’s entering the adolescent years, more creativity is needed given that hormones enter the scene to mess up any plan in seconds.

As parents, there are days that we feel like our minds have only dead air, fresh ideas dried up, and the rules spilled over. But somehow, somewhere, God’s gracious perspective enters the scene and the innovative angle appears like the sunny blue sky saying hello after a thunderstorm.

I love that about God’s unsullied perspective. It’s nothing I see. It’s an indefinable slant I struggle to wrap my mind around. Yet it’s just what He purposed all along.

As a writer and parent, I need His perspective. I stumble in my approach, my slant spills out wrong, and my perspective needs a gentle twist.

Now if only God did laundry …