New Year, New You

I’m starting to think that we shouldn’t have taught Gryffin to read.  Riding in the car with him lately is a non-stop onslaught of words and phrases and questions and commentary.   He reads everything.  Every.thing.  All the things, he reads them.

“Stoooop… stop sign, Mama!  STOP!!!  It’s a stop sign.”

“Ped Ex-ing… what does that mean, Mama?”

“Get… your… avo-ca-dos… for… the… big… game… what’s the big game, Mama?  Are we going to play a game?  I like avocados.  Why would we get them for a game?  Why is there a football inSIDE the avocado?   That’s funny.”

“Fol-low us on… Fack-book… and get a prize.  What’s Fack-book, Mama?  I want a prize.  How do you follow a Fack-book?”

“Cranberry…Vanilla… Grape-Nuts…power-packed… for your… action-packed day…it says they are delicious, Mama!  Can we get some, Mama!?  I looooove Grape-Nuts.  I promise I will like them.”

“Western… Ave… must…exit… why, Mama?  Why do we have to exit?”

“Meeer-ge… what’s merge, Mama?”

Seriously.  It never ends.  He keeps going and going and going and going and going and going and when we are stuck in traffic I think I literally might die before he stops.  My poor, lifeless, introverted heart starts to shrivel up inside my chest until I finally say,

“SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.”
“Should we just look out the window for a few minutes?  Look!  The ferris wheel is moving.”

In all honesty, I am enamored by his reading and his sweet, inquisitive spirit.  I feel like I can almost see the wheels turning inside his head and I don’t want his countless questions and endless inquiries to stop.  But still.  Throw a dog a bone once in a while and let a woman drive in peace, would ya?

Yesterday on the way home from preschool, Gryffin and Isaiah were telling me all about snack-time (raisins = yuck!) and I was enjoying the drive home without the usual boundless banter about billboards and street signs.  It was a welcome reprieve.  But as we neared one of the main intersections, Gryffin caught sight of an advertisement and couldn’t resist.

“New… Year… New… You.”

G: “What does that mean, Mama?  New Year, New You?”

Me: “Oh, it was probably about making New Year’s resolutions.”

G: “What’s a new year’s resolution?”

Me:  Long pause as I try to figure out how to explain the concept to a 5-year-old.

“At the start of the new year, sometimes people like to set new goals or start something new. You know, like at our family meetings, when we talk about what we’d like to work on during the upcoming week?  Like when you wanted to work on being a helper at preschool.  That sort of thing.  We just started a new year so people are thinking about what kinds of choices they are making and how they might like to do things differently.”

G: Mulling it over, he says again,  “New Year, New You.”  Then he chuckles and says, “Well, that’s just silly, Mama.  You can’t be a new YOU.  Why would you want to be a new you?”

Stumped, I told him I’d need to think it over and we drove the rest of the way in (admittedly blissful) silence.  But I’ve been thinking about it ever since.  It’s strange to hear and see advertisements through the perspective of a child.  It occurred to me that Gryffin is entirely content being Gryffin.  I wish I could say the same.  But I can’t.  Not all of the time.

It brings to mind a chapter from Daring Greatly by Brene Brown where Brown writes,

I see the cultural messaging everywhere that says that an ordinary life is a meaningless life.

Brown explains that we live in what she calls a “never enough” culture in the U.S, largely fueled by media. Because of the pervasive and persistent messaging coming at us at from every perceivable angle we can all immediately fill in the blank of “I’m never ___________ enough.”   Good enough.  Perfect enough. Thin enough.  Successful enough.  Smart enough.  Extraordinary, safe, certain, etc.   Whatever it is, you are never enough.  Ours is a scarcity-driven culture.

With Gryffin (and Isaiah soon enough) now reading, and no doubt absorbing, all of this messaging a mile a minute, it seems an insurmountable mountain to climb to somehow resist what is so enticing and so enveloping.   Brown says that it has to start with me; that I can’t give my children something I don’t have.  BOO.  I suppose she’s right, though.  I can’t teach the boys to curb the constant noise of our culture if I’m not able to do it myself.

Brenda Salter McNeil is one of the teaching pastors at our church and a few months ago she touched on this topic in one of her sermons.  She was teaching about false testimony and she said (I’m paraphrasing) that when we are overwhelmed and bombarded with messages from media and Facebook and everywhere else, we need to shut it down and let God tell us who we are. Take 15 minutes, she said, and “let God tell you who you are.”

I wrote it down and it’s been with me in my purse ever since.  Instead of listening to the near-constant barrage of noise and believing that I’m not good enough, smart enough, thin enough or whatever enough, I’m going to sit down and let God sing a new song over me.  I’m going to let God tell me who I really am. Maybe that’s what I’ll work on this year.  New Year, SAME Me.  And if Brene Brown is right, then someday I’ll be able to teach my sweet, scrutinizing fellas to slow down; to lean in and to listen for the song that God is singing over them as well.   Until then,

“Speeeeeed… liiiimit… 35… MAMA!!!  SLOW DOWN!!”