The Process of Parenting

Written by Jessica Counts, 2025 Graduate Parent

 

Those silly adages were true after all. “It goes by so fast. Cherish every moment. Enjoy the simple days of little people all together at home.”  

Holding a newborn baby, stunned in gratitude and weighty wonder at the great responsibility, the unknown, hopeful promise of who this little person will one day grow to be, those words meant little. A mother thinks, “But I have to figure out who this person is, how to feed them, clothe them, teach them, know them; sending them out into the world is light years away.” 

But step by step, day by day, the moment arrives. You ready them, ready yourself, for the world out there. You pray you did enough: steeped them in wonder, clothed them in righteousness, formed them in intentionality, drenched them in rich literature, covered them in prayer, enriched their vocabulary, comforted them with kindness, emboldened them for holy companionship, structured their days of learning, deepened their sense of gratitude, awakened them to the need for corporal worship. Is she ready? (Am I ready?) Will their foundation be strong enough to know the ways to walk, to seek the Lord, to make good friendships, to embrace the hard, good, necessary work it is to learn, to hear the cries of the poor, to discern their vocation and unique path to holiness?

This time is, for me, a great “bridging,” a being in both worlds, in my home- my ordinary, immediate duty- and now out there in the world as my oldest child enters it fully. I have to be flexible, even more present to those in my home for I know now how fast it all goes, but also present to the phone calls that may come from a college dorm. I have to be here and there. And this is a challenge. Will this stretching break me? Or, with God’s grace, will it be an opening of myself that I may be filled with even more of what is so deeply good in this life, that which is a foretaste of Heaven. I know that every stretching of myself is meant to be an emptying of myself, that I may fill it with God, in and through loving others. 

Maybe those pregnancy and labor pangs-- the greatest physical marathon-like stretching and growing a woman can experience, maybe those early days of newborn parenting the first baby, maybe those late nights and long open-ended days, maybe those let’s figure it out cry by cry, baby step by baby step, letter recognition to reading, those processes, become the very necessary foundational stones that makes this bridging of my present reality possible. We learned together with and alongside our oldest daughter just how to be parents: how to feed, clothe, teach, but also, more importantly, how to: know, love, serve, see, wonder, grow, learn, listen, attune, admonish, attend, guide, observe, extend, welcome, show, witness, express, share, receive, experience, embrace, give affection, in sum, to bend down- stoop down- reach back up- lift them up- hug them tight- guide them up and out. 

This act of learning to be parent, learning another, is akin to our worship. This is our posture: to bend down to the earth that God made, and lift creation back up to Him in gratitude. This happens upon the altar at the hands of a priest; this happens in the lifting of a child from his crib; this happens in the baking of the bread in the oven. Bend down- lift up- praise- thank. It is what Our Lord in fact did for us.

Parenting becomes a growing of ourselves. I have, with God’s grace, the deep love of my husband, and the attention needed by my children, healed parts of me that needed to be made holier, perfected. In and through loving my daughter, then each of my subsequent children, in and through the holy bonds of marriage, the love lived out, we have built the foundations of that bridge. This bridge my children shall traverse upon and then move out into the world outside our home, to subsequently continue the building of the foundation stones on the other side. May I “bridge” for my children as Our Lord “bridged for us.”

St Catherine of Siena said, “So the height of the Divinity, humbled to the earth, and joined with your humanity, made the Bridge and reformed the road.”

This article is republished from Volume 1 of the Annual Showcase Magazine "An Invitation to Wonder."

2025 Annual Theme | An Invitation to Wonder: A Culture of Learning at Home. Find more details on how to submit in the upcoming annual showcase magazine, more inspiration from the theme, and where to purchase a limited edition print copy of the 2025 magazine.