Parenting: Never An Interruption

“And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, ‘Who touched my garments?’” – Mark 5:30-31

I was recently home alone with the kids, mollifying Eric out of a grumpy mood by folding paper airplanes with him in my office room, when Ellie came up wanting to show me a math strategy she’d invented. Earlier Emmy had said she was hungry; I’d sent her off to peel a clementine for herself. Now Elijah came up wanting one too, so I sent him off with the same instructions. I asked Ellie to show me, but she said I had to come sit down with her so I told her to go back out for now. I managed to supervise a few more folds of the airplane before I heard bawling from the kitchen. I left Eric, went out to find Elijah crying because he had asked Ellie whether a fruit in the fruit bowl was an orange or lemon? and she had refused to answer. I told Ellie she wasn’t being very kind, told Elijah it was an orange and wiped his tears on his blankie as Emmy calmly handed me all her clementine rind bits as Elijah happened to be obstructing her access to the trash can. I got Elijah a clementine only to turn around and find Ellie crying. I had just sat down with her when I heard Eric yelling in frustration from the other room because he couldn’t figure out how to fold his airplane.

Rachel Jankovic, a mother of five under five at the time, writes in her book Loving The Little Years about “the bulk effect,” when the collective level of stress is more than the sum of its parts. This is to be expected in big families, and it’s important not to blame one child when responding to the stress of the whole situation, or to see children as problems to be organized rather than individuals. “Christian childrearing,” Jankovic writes, “is a pastoral pursuit, not an organizational challenge. The more children you have, the more you need to be pastorally minded. Look to each of their souls and their needs… Study them. Seek them out. Sacrifice the thing you were doing to work through minor emotional issues. A lot of children from big families discover very early on that their parents simply do not have time for their problems.”

Jesus is surrounded here, we are told twice, by a great crowd, an immense throng of people. He is on a time-sensitive, public mission. The woman had already been physically healed. She obviously did not mean to interrupt him, touching only his garment, in secret, so he would not be delayed by loss of time or being publicly acknowledged as now ceremonially unclean. Why did he stop? Perhaps because he wanted to clarify that her healing came through faith, not some semi-superstitious touch of cloth. Perhaps to demonstrate the necessity of confession. Perhaps because as a poor, unclean outcast, as someone who had reached the desperate end of all else that could help her, she needed to be seen, to be called daughter, to receive peace. Even though she was already physically healed, it is only later in verse 34 that Jesus says, “be healed of your disease.”

But the point is, Jesus stops. He stops to address the gospel-need, the heart-need, of someone who to everyone else was an interruption. Isn’t this so much of what parenting is about? Sometimes moments I perceive as frustrating interruptions are actually opportunities God provides to help me see the heart- or gospel-need of one of my children. The point is not to vent my frustration, or take it personally, or merely manage them all into better outward behavior. The point is to be willing to let go of agendas and appearances to pause and ask as Jesus did, who touched me? To look at our children and ask, who are you? Are you reaching out to me? What is going on in your heart? How do you need the gospel in this moment? 

In that particular moment, I felt like Ellie, who tends to ask the least, needed me the most, so I stayed with her, and the others ended up being fine. But it might be different each time. I’m constantly reminding myself that when pressed upon by the crowds, when the bulk effect takes hold, it’s important not to lose my sense of presence or vision. Jesus’ interruption ended up being an opportunity to glorify God and embody the gospel more in the life of both the woman and Jairus’ daughter than he would perhaps have otherwise. May we see the people before us as he does.