Becoming a Grandparent

There is something beautifully different about loving your grandchildren. As a parent, you are in the middle of everything. You are making the decisions. Setting the boundaries. Packing the lunches. Worrying about the grades. Correcting the behavior. Drying the tears. Wondering if you’re doing too much, too little, or somehow getting the whole thing wrong. And then one day, if you’re lucky, you get to watch your children do it.

You become a grandparent. And suddenly, you find yourself in this beautiful place where you get to be both a bystander and a participant. You get to stand back and watch.

You watch your child become a parent.

You see pieces of yourself show up in the way they love their children, and occasionally in the way they lose their patience. 😂

You recognize traditions they carried forward without you even realizing they mattered. You hear yourself come out of their mouths and think, Well, would you look at that. And sometimes you watch them do things completely differently than you did.

That’s part of it too.

Because being the bystander means understanding that this is their turn.

Their family.
Their decisions.
Their lessons to learn.
Their memories to make.

We don’t have to step into every situation. We don’t have to offer an opinion about everything. We don’t have to parent our grandchildren because they already have parents.

There is wisdom in knowing when to step back, but then there’s the other side.

We get to participate. Oh, what a gift that is.

We get the sleepovers and the snuggles. The sporting events and school programs. The vacations and birthday parties. The inside jokes nobody else understands. We get to tell them stories about their parents when they were little. We get to teach them things their parents may never think to teach them simply because we have lived a little longer. We get to remind them where they came from. We get to be another safe place. Another voice saying,

I see you.

I’m proud of you.

You can always come to me.

And perhaps one of the greatest gifts we bring to our grandchildren is something we didn’t have when we were raising our own children: Perspective.

We know now how fast it goes. When you’re raising children, everyone tells you that.

“Don’t blink.”

“You’ll miss these days.”

“They grow up so fast.”

And you’re standing there exhausted with three loads of laundry, somebody crying, somebody needing a ride somewhere, and dinner still needing to be made thinking,

Sure. But today isn’t moving nearly fast enough. 😂

Then somehow…it does.

They grow up, and when the grandchildren come along, you realize everyone was right.

So maybe we linger a little longer. Maybe we don’t care about the mess quite as much. Maybe we say yes to one more book. Maybe we watch them jump into the pool for the hundredth time like it’s the first. Maybe we listen to the seventeen minute story that could have been told in thirty seconds because we know there will come a day when we would give anything to hear that little voice tell it again.

Grandparenting gives us something parenting rarely afforded us:

The ability to recognize the moment while we’re still standing in it. And I don’t want to miss that.

I want to know when to stand back and simply watch the lives of my children and grandchildren unfold, but I also want to know when to step in.

To love.
To encourage.
To teach.
To laugh.
To make memories.
To pray.
To remind them who they are and Whose they are. Because one day, I will become part of the stories they tell.

“My Mimi always…”

I think about that more than I probably should. What will come after those words? I hope they remember that Mimi showed up. I hope they remember that my house felt safe. I hope they remember laughter. I hope they remember that I listened. I hope they remember that I believed in them. I hope they remember that I loved Jesus, and that the way I loved them made Him easier to see. Because maybe that’s the sacred privilege of being a grandparent. We aren’t called to take over the story. We simply get the extraordinary privilege of having a part in it.

Standing close enough to participate, and far enough back to recognize the miracle happening right in front of us. 💛