Where Are the Children?

I watched the beginning of Notting Hill with Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts, and I love that scene where she comes to the dinner party with his friends and they’re all trying to play it cool. Even though she’s a super big movie star and they’re sitting around and they’re having dinner. And as I was watching the scene and I was really enjoying it and I was feeling relaxed, I thought, oh, they’re all in their thirties. I guess when I was watching it, It was clear that they were in their early thirties. I haven’t looked it up but I’m going to guess that Julie Roberts and Hugh Grant and all those actors were in their early thirties and there were no children.

There were no children, no. That is part of the storyline and one of the couples is that they were struggling with infertility and couldn’t get pregnant. But, all the times that I’ve watched this movie, which is a delightful checkout of your life, it feels like a good movie. It’s so funny and cheeky. I realized that there were no children. So then I watched a little bit of Top Gun Maverick, which was fun; Also no children. The single mom has a young adult daughter. But all the time that she, you know, is on the boat with Tom Cruise or on his motorcycle or at the bar, which looks very romantic, but, I’ve been to bars and it’s not actually that romantic and they smell bad. But in the movie, it looks great. There are no children.

I watched the Barbie movie, which was not as bad as I thought it was going to be for all the pitchforks on the internet had about it. I thought it was pretty self-aware just in the sense that it knew it was a feminist movie. I just didn’t think it was the worst thing of all time. And I was prepared to think that it was the worst thing of all time, but it wasn’t that awful. It wasn’t great. I don’t think I’ll run out and show my girls that movie and be like, this is amazing, but it was just like a candy movie, right? Like you just watch it and it’s silly and fun. There are no children. There are those teen girls. And they’re there for a little bit but there’s no crying; there’s no diapers.

These women are all experiencing the challenges of the movie. The ups and the downs as adults with no children around. The other thing that I’ve been watching, I guess I’m late to the game is for all mankind, which is basically about the space race between The United States and Russia. Back in the early sixties, like when we first landed on the moon, except in episode one season one, Russia landed on the moon first. So it’s kind of like a parallel universe. So it’s kind of like our world, but a little bit different. And then it explores the families of these astronauts and there are more children. There are some children in that show, but very few actually. And very few babies, and toddlers, like, if you notice, when you look at television and movies, there aren’t a lot of children around. And the things that adults do are doing the fun things or the challenging things. It does not involve a lot of children. And I say this ’cause then we come back to our own lives, with regular homes that have children in it. And I think we don’t know what it’s supposed to look like. We don’t know If the amount of crying or chaos or sibling fights is appropriate or not. We don’t know if we are air quotes, “normal family”, or “a good family”. We don’t have a lot of examples to show us this is what it should look like. We have a lot of examples around us of what a different kind of life looks like for people without children or people who have old enough children that they’re not a problem on the show or in the movie, right?

And so I just want to bring your attention to this; It just really struck me mainly because I guess I just don’t watch a lot of movies or television. And I realized in a short period of time that those lives look easier, they don’t look better. When I look at Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts and all of those people sitting around at the table, I wasn’t wishing that I had their life. But I fully acknowledged that they were all people in their early thirties sitting around at a dinner calmly with nowhere else to be. And if you think that, that’s what life should look like even just for a moment, right? Even if you’re watching that movie and we think, oh, I wish my life was like that. And then we come back to the chaos of our regular lives. It’s just confusing.

And so I want you to explain to your brain what’s going on because the truth is, if we were to take a television show that was fun and interesting that we watched, just for leisure and we stuck some babies and some toddlers into every scene. It wouldn’t be very enjoyable to watch. It just wouldn’t. And actually, because our lives are so chaotic, one of the reasons we like movies and we like television is to escape from that and to live in a fantastical world that someone has created to be entertained. And it would not be very entertaining if we were looking to relax because there were a bunch of babies and toddlers. And so, I’m okay with that. I’m okay when I’m watching a movie and that there aren’t children. And then it may not be an accurate depiction of what family life looks like. But then when I leave and I come back to my family, I don’t want to make that wrong or bad. I want to be really clear with my brain, like, Hey brain, that’s not real life. And that’s okay.

I don’t actually want that. I want my real life. I want the messiness. I want the noise. I want the chaos. And so I don’t know, this just hit me kind of hard as I was traveling and I wanted to share it with you just to bring your awareness to the fact that we just don’t see examples of families. In movies or television very often. And that makes sense again, because they probably wouldn’t be as common as enjoyable. If we stuck a bunch of children in them. But, that’s not how we’re supposed to live. It makes sense that the things that we would watch. It’s like when you finally get old enough to realize all the young adult fiction is mostly made up of orphans. Almost all the young adult fiction is like, oh, their parents died or their parents went away. Or they were shipwrecked and the parents are gone. And as you read more and more young adult fiction, you realize that’s just what almost every story begins with. And it’s because the stories would not be very interesting if you had healthy well-adjusted parents who were around and said, no. You may not go do that crazy adventure. You’re grounded, Right? It wouldn’t be interesting.

The whole point of young adult fiction, as they’re reading it as teens and young adults, is for them to imagine being independent and being in these interesting and extreme situations where they have to push themselves and go on this hero’s journey. And I just, it wouldn’t be fun or interesting if your mom was there. So this episode is not picking a bone with entertainment. But make sure you draw the line. Make sure you draw the line and you go, yeah, that makes sense. That entertainment would be about this. But the fact that I come home and then I’m living my regular life isn’t a problem. It doesn’t mean I’m doing it wrong. It’s not like everyone else’s having lots more fun.

A friend of mine just got back from a trip. And I said, oh, how was it? and she said, well, you know, we have two small children. And I was like, yep I know we didn’t even have to unpack that. What she meant was that their vacations aren’t relaxing when you have two small children. And she wasn’t complaining. She wasn’t saying, oh, I’ll never be happy again. What was the point? But she was just acknowledging like, yeah. I mean, we can go to another place that’s interesting and the scenery changes, But, taking two small children to another place it’s still not relaxing. So I think it’s really important for us to pay attention to the ways that we are unsatisfied. And to hold them up and go is this a real problem or not? So much of the work that I do with moms is about dumping out their drama. Like if you imagine we’re kind of going to dump your drama all out onto the table. And then we’re going to sort through things that aren’t real. I won’t be like, oh, that wasn’t real. It’s not reasonable to expect. That you would take a vacation with small children and it would be relaxing.

Like there’s no laying by the pool or sleeping in. I mean, if you met someone who was taking a six month old, and a two and a half year old to any location you would be like, oh yeah, that’s, there’s going to be some stress there, not a problem. There’s some really awesome hacks on the internet now for how to do it better, but it’s, you know, It’s not going to be relaxing. And so if that person was worried that they did it wrong. I would just say, oh, nope that was just an unreasonable expectation of a trip with two small children versus I want to help moms find the challenges that can be worked on. For example, within a day of having small children, teenagers, a lot of children whatever’s going on in your life you can use tools and cope better with your life. So it’s not as crazy and stressful. We can live through a day that feels all over the place and out of control and we’re never catching our breath.

Or we can live that same day. We can get ahead of some things. We can be resilient. We can be flexible. We can communicate things more clearly. And we can just handle that day a little bit better. And so when you’re feeling dissatisfied with your life, which you think is pretty normal; Human experience where we’re just like, huh? Some level of dissatisfaction, sadness, frustration I want you to just bring it into the light and ask yourself, is there some work here that I could do that could make it better or am I just having an unreasonable expectation about something. For example, you know, a lot of us grew up watching friends. And now when I watch friends, I’m like, oh, it was kind of just funny that none of them had kids. I guess Ross had a son, but kids weren’t really part of the show. They also were in their late twenties, early thirties.

I’ve heard them talk about the actual money exchange, like all of them and what they did and how much money they would make. Now, they were in a rent controlled apartment I think. But you just begin to see the show differently. Like, it was so fun to watch that when I was in my twenties, I called my gosh and it looked so fun. But now, Michael Mike, they dated a lot of people. They slept with a lot of people. When I see it now, it doesn’t feel fun. I’m like, oh, it feels totally different. And that’s okay. Again, books and movies and television, and it’s our job to guard our eyes and put good things into our eyes. But the purpose of entertainment is to entertain; That’s okay.

But then don’t go back to your real life and say, why is my real life not like this? And then we see that in romantic comedies too. Right? When we watch romantic comedies, we first see that it’s scripted. It’s not actually how humans speak or behave most of the time, but we see romantic comedies. And, then it could be really easy to then come home to your husband that you’ve been married to for 10 or 20 years and feel disappointed. Like, my marriage isn’t like that. And so then I want you to notice your dissatisfaction. And then ask yourself what part of it is real and what part of it is not real. For example, reasonably, we all know that movies depict people in their dating stages in the most sparkly version of it. Because it’s scripted and meant to be entertaining that it’s not really how people are in their real lives. Okay now, you might still go oh, but I wish that there was more romance or sparkling this in my marriage. How can I create that? I think that’s an excellent question. So we’re not trying to recreate whatever we’re watching in the romantic comedy, but it may show you that you want to do something with your husband that you’ve never done before. Like go on a date and try something new or be silly. Or try something you haven’t done together in a long time.

So I just want to point out these two different types of dissatisfaction. We want to catch ourselves and make sure that we’re not being dissatisfied by holding up ourselves and our lives against something that is fake and not real. And I guess for this whole episode, I was thinking about television and shows, but I’m sure we could make a similar parallel for social media. But then sometimes it shows us dissatisfaction that we have that we can work on. So maybe as you’re watching the scene in Notting Hill, are these adults having a dinner party that you decide that you want to ask one of your friends to go out to dinner?

And you think, you know what? It’s been a long time since I’ve called up one of my girlfriends and we went and had Thai food together. And I could make that happen. And so sometimes. I think when we notice the dissatisfaction, there’s a longing there and we can do something about it. So it was just interesting to me. I don’t often travel or leave my little bubble of life here in Northern Idaho. And, as I left and encountered both, you know, new places, new restaurants, new people, new environments, but then also just movies, which I don’t often encounter. I was struck with how few children there are. They’re just not a lot of children in the examples of entertainment that I saw. It’s a lot of people who are single and free. And it would be really easy to look at that. And think, oh, that looks so great or that looks better. But it’s just not real, It’s not even real for them. And it’s not really what we want. And so for most of us, you know, if you’re rocking that little kid circus, maybe you do mean to schedule some time with your husband or a friend, but also it’s a really beautiful thing to raise children.

It’s such a worthy endeavor. And there’s no way around the noise and the chaos. Let us choose it. All right. I choose to have this crazy circus instead of dinner parties in my mid thirties with my unmarried friends. I’m not saying that that’s bad. I’m just saying it’s not real for most of us. So, of course our homes look messier. I want you to celebrate what you are doing. I think real life is so beautiful. What’s that? GK Chesterton quotes “The most extraordinary thing is an ordinary man and woman in their family”, maybe husband and wife and their family. I think it’s extraordinary what we’re doing and I understand why. They don’t videotape our lives and then make it into television. It wouldn’t be very entertaining or relaxing maybe. It is beautiful and it is worthy. And when you encounter this feeling of dissatisfaction. Take it to the Lord and just say, Lord show me what’s real. Because he wants to fulfill the desires of your heart. And so at the core of your dissatisfaction might be something that you could work on. That you could ask for. That you could sign up for.

But let us not look to television and movies and social media and think that it is real, and that is how we should be living, It is not. All right my friends. Keep fighting the good fight. Motherhood is often an invisible work, but God sees. God sees what you do and he is proud of you. Thank you so much for listening and have a blessed day.