Monday Motherhood Musings: Movies are Teaching Me Now - Watch out!

I did nothing all weekend.  Absolutely nothing.  I didn't even put forth enough effort to read a book or magazine.  I was L-A-Z-Y. 

It was incredible.

Part of what I watched on the lovely boob tube was the end of a movie I've seen several times...Spanglish.  I'm not usually a huge Adam Sandler fan, but he's growing on me a little.

So I was watching the end with the mother and daughter arguing, and listening to the daughter narrate.  She says her mother asked her the question of her life: Does she want to be someone very different than her mother?

Photo courtesy of Ambro; FreeDigitalPhotos.net

This started me thinking about my own kids.

The daughter is narrating a story that is her application to a prestigious university.  Her final line says something like this, "Your acceptance, while it would thrill me, will not define me.  My identity rests firmly in that I am my mother's daughter."

I have seen this movie several times, as I said.  This line hit me differently yesterday though...I started thinking about myself as a daughter...do I want to be my mother's daughter?  I've resolved a lot of that already for myself...in some ways I am proud to be like my mother, in some ways I fight it like crazy.

Then I started thinking about my own daughters.  Do they want their identity resting in me?  Do I want their identity resting in me?

I mean, my first thought after that, besides wondering what they would say, is to think: No way! Thank goodness they're so much better than me!

My second thought is:  No.  I want their identity resting in being God's lovely daughters.  I didn't discover this until I was in my twenties, and it has taken me a lot of years of learning (I'm slow) to really "get" that, accept it, and live my life in the joy of being His daughter. 

I'm still getting it.  It doesn't make me perfect and unable to fall.  It means I have the strongest arms imaginable available to pick me up.  It means I have the perfect teacher, who teaches me over and over and over, no matter how many times I mess up.

We can't just say that we want better for our children than what we had or what we turned out to be.  We have to actively identify what that better is and consciously teach it.

This shouldn't be a lightening bolt in my life, but it is.  I feel like I should have gotten it a long time ago, but I didn't.  I am where I am, and I'm starting here.