Graduation season reminds me of being in seminary (the first time), studying for an MDiv, and wondering JUST HOW did those students who were also parents actually SURVIVE?! And then, years later, I began the DMin program while pregnant with my first and graduated while pregnant with my second and third. This picture is worth a thousand words. I found out that the answer to my original question was: “You JUST do it. You JUST do whatever it takes.”
My pediatrician had told me that it mattered very little what I read, but what mattered most was that my child heard my voice and was beginning to form a vocabulary of words. So I read to my first-born what became my favorite required text, “Dissent and Empowerment: Essays in Honor of Gayraud Wilmore.” To this day, I contend that this is why she, at the tender age of seven, is so passionate about racial equality!
In the fall of 2011, when my cohort and I traveled to the Art Institute of Chicago during our week of study, they were gracious enough to include Hannah in the field trip. When a member of the group, who had no children, presented Hannah a picture book filled with some of the most classic and famous paintings, I shed one grateful and hot tear. Here I was wondering if everyone thought I was a little less than professional, a little less than serious, a little less than…in general…for having to bring my child along on a field trip…and I was also a little concerned that many of them felt burdened by the addition of a 23-month old…and here was Cynthia, telling me just how special it was to meet and spend time with my daughter, who had only been known to her before in the presence of my pregnancy.
The Gospel and Global Media with Dr. Mary Hess (you won’t want to miss the opportunity to follow her writing, her ideas, her teaching, her inspiration about the connection between faith and digital media, her way of describing the journey of parenthood, Christian faith, and many other things), offered the opportunity to not only gain the tools to manage a blog (like I’m doing now!), but also began a personal and professional journey with the emerging paradigm shift from the former and familiar siloed model of CHRISTIAN EDUCATION toward a holistic model of FAITH FORMATION (the UCC has great information about the paradigm shift). This empowered and equipped me as a parent to engage in faith formation at home with my children, and challenged me to encourage a shift toward the FAITH FORMATION model within the congregation I serve.
My final project for this class used the video capture of reading my oldest her favorite book to explore the connection between academic and faith learning. and it now remains one of my most cherished memories of that time in our lives.
As I look back on that season of our lives, having just begun a new call in a new city, my mind is full of varying sentiments of the time, ranging from the frustration of negotiating parenting roles within what was then our new reality to gratitude for marriage, family, and a new church family from whom we began to receive so much support, from the chaos of moving to a new town and being in the thick of a doctoral program to the joy of proximity to Lake Michigan, the train to Chicago, and of the pure pleasure of the satisfaction of using my mind through study. I’d rather not recall when I got so angry that I booked a room at the Microtel where my husband and daughter could not interrupt me as I was finally finishing my thesis, or the other time when I almost lost it when my husband suggested I take the three-year old with me to the coffee shop where I was headed to finish at least five more pages (“after all, he said, you can bring her with you, set up your computer and start to write, and then I will be right there, I promise!”). For me, this captured video is evidence that in the midst of all the sweat and tears, there were moments like these, sacred to the core.
reverendmotherpk 