Off-Script Christian Parenting: On tattoos and red wagons
Photo from Nappy.co and Children Nature Network
Three days after my eldest daughter’s 18th birthday she got a tattoo. She’s always had an independent streak, and as soon as she had the legal right to get inked, she exercised it. This was no snap decision. The whole thing had been carefully orchestrated: she’d thought through what she wanted, drawn up a design, scheduled a consultation with a reputable artist, and set the appointment well in advance.
Christian parenting is tough. On one hand, I desperately want my two daughters to have faith in God. I want them to experience the church as a place that models the love of God. I want them to be compelled to act when they see the image of God in their neighbors.
On the other, I don’t want the weight of my expectations to become an unbearable burden. And, if I’m honest, my expectations are weighty.
More than anything, I want my daughters to be themselves—to live into the promise of belovedness they were given in their baptisms.
As Christian parents, my spouse and I have not followed the script when it comes to childhood faith formation. We’ve challenged the voices that prescribe a right way. And I’m confident we’ve missed the mark as much as we’ve hit it in nurturing the faith of our two daughters.
My daughters never regularly attended Sunday School or really any form of age-appropriate Christian Education. I served as a Campus Pastor at a University for nearly their entire childhood and they worshiped primarily with 18-22 year-olds. When other kids were doing Godly Play or reading stories out of children’s Bibles, ours had philosophy majors telling them about Hegel and religion majors informing them that Moses didn’t write the Torah.
Their confirmation was unorthodox, too. When a handful of seminary Interns I supervised asked how they might get experience teaching confirmation, I willingly offered my daughters as tributes for several consecutive years.
When the girls were 5 and 7, respectively, they were invited by the brothers of Taizé to sit with Brother Alois, the prior of the Taizé, for their meeting in Chicago. This meant they’d be seated on a platform with the brothers in front of hundreds of people with the expectation that they’d have the capacity to manage a 15-minute silent meditation well.
After a lengthy discussion with our daughters, we accepted the invitation. But what I remember most about the experience was the conversations my spouse and I had as we walked up to the venue where the meeting was to be held:
“Is this something that they’re okay doing? Have they really given consent to this?
They’re saying they want to do this, but how can they know what they’re getting themselves into?
Is this the kind of experience that makes someone hate the church? That makes you ask, ‘Why did my parents make me do this?’
Is this too much to expect?”
Looking back, I’m not sure I know the answer to these questions even now.
When I reflect on the job I’ve done nurturing the faith of my children, I still have more questions than answers. There are times I ponder if we should have done it all differently. I wonder if throwing out the script was the right choice.
If I reflect on this too much, I can work myself into an anxious knot. I can feel the tension in my body between the parenting suppose-to-dos I inherited and the way my spouse and I practice parenting. And I know, as far as Christian parenting goes, I’m not alone in this.
On the day my daughter got her tattoo, she unceremoniously posted a picture of it in the family group chat. I was eating Korean Barbeque with a friend when the picture appeared on my phone, and it stopped me midsentence. I was speechless.
My friend asked, “Are you okay?” as I began to tear up.
The tattoo pictured a group of three rabbits, two of whom were seated in a red wagon being pulled by a third. The rabbit farthest to the right, the one pulling the wagon, was significantly larger than the other two and was clearly wearing a clerical collar.
I am the big rabbit.
Years ago, during my first call, Mondays were my day off. Our family called them daddy days. And on daddy days the girls would get in the wagon and I’d pull them down Burlington Avenue to a playground, and then we’d go to McDonalds for a Happy Meal.
Of all the infinite possibilities, my daughter’s 18th birthday tattoo memorialized daddy day.
If the tattoo is any indication, sharing my day off with my daughters for a few years stuck. Script or not, somewhere amidst the chaos of her upbringing, she’d caught sight of the belovedness I want her to know in something ordinary: a day set apart, a parent present, a place for play and imagination, a gathering around a table, a little red wagon.
As I shared the image with my friend, I couldn’t help but catch sight of the grace in all of it. Somehow through all the moments where we miss the mark as Christian parents, it’s possible to do this well.
[NOTE: This isn’t a story I can tell without the permission of my family, especially my eldest daughter whose body is referenced in the story. My daughters and spouse read, commented on, and endorsed this blog prior to its publication.]
Rev. Adam White
Adam White is the Senior Pastor of Faith Lutheran Church in Waconia, Minnesota. He previously served as the Campus Pastor at The Lutheran Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) and an Adjunct Instructor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota.
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