Love 'Em For Who They Are

If there's one lesson I've learned {and am still very much in the process of learning} about loving husband and children, it's this:

Love them for who they are and not for who you want them to be.

Clearly one could write a book on this but for now, how about just a post?

I am a girl of dreams and expectations. Prone to bossy-ness and control, I could write a list called How to Live Your Best Life Now and then a follow-up list called Did You Do That Stuff I Said on the First List?

Those are touching and endearing qualities for a wife and mother, are they not?

Sometimes I'm nudged to examine how much expectation I place on others in subtle ways. You may recall this post about Blondie a year or so ago. How I agonized over her issues with books and reading, how God showed me that I needed to just let go.

Well, she has continued to read...but more out of duty rather than delight. It has been a laborious, tiresome, chore of a task and I have simply hoped that one day she would grow to love books as much as I do. {Again, the expectations. Groan.}

We've tried American Girl books. Nope. I bought the whole Little House series, just knowing she would love it. She didn't. After painfully getting through Book 1, she came to me and asked, Mommy, will you be offended if I tell you that I just really don't like this book? It's just, well, sort of boring for me. I'm sorry.

And while I wasn't offended, I was a little sad and mostly bewildered. Oscillating between thinking of her as ungrateful and overly particular versus thinking that we just hadn't found the right genre, I was at a loss. After trying and failing with many books, I spotted one I'd forgotten about on the shelf, one I'd picked up brand new from a thrift store forever ago.

A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. The books {13 in all} are quirky and dark, full of irony, rich characters and ghastly situations. The children, though prone to one misfortune after another, remain inventive, heroic and hilarious. The plots are a roller-coaster of despair and short-lived triumph.

She can't stop reading. With each book, she's building confidence and reading faster, catching me up on the previous chapters whenever we get even a minute to chat.

And while I had visions of her snuggled under her comforter reading pioneer adventures and sweet stories of vintage girlhood, that's just not her thing.

I shouldn't be surprised. Roald Dahl, with his freakish characters and odd, mysterious tales, was one of my favorite authors as a child.

And so I accept and applaud this girl of mine who is coming into her own in many ways, literature preferences and all. She's not tattooing herself {yet} or dying her hair fuschia, but I'm learning, in both the big and little things, that while I can lead and guide, nurture and love, she is who she is.

I love her for that.

As for those lists about how to do life according to me, I don't think anyone's reading them anyway.