Ordinary Days: Accidental lessons from my parents

I don’t always have the best posture. At 5-foot-3, I should make a point to always stand up straight, but I often catch myself standing with a slouch in my spine. 

When that happens, I’ll do a little correction — hips back, shoulders up and out. Then I laugh. Because that little self-correction is ingrained in me from when I was a teenager and my mom came up to me one day and put one hand on my hip and another on my shoulder. Very gently, she pushed my hip back where I had lazily let it fall forward, and nudged my shoulder up, proud and straight.

She only did it that one time — it wasn’t like she did that every time she saw me slouching — though it probably still annoyed me. But the crazy thing is, I am almost 40 years old and still have to correct my posture. Each time I remember that one random day when she gently nudged me toward standing tall.  

Another thing buried deep in me from a single instance in my childhood is when my mom made up a song to teach a VBS class about the books of the Bible. She actually made up two songs — one for the Old Testament and one for the New Testament. One of the tunes is a version of Yankee Doodle, but the other one is such a jumble, I can’t believe it’s still stuck in my head. But both of them are there, planted during one week when my mom was a summer VBS teacher. I still use those songs if I’m looking for some obscure book in the Bible, like Obadiah or Malachi. I’ve even taught them to Kate, though I think the tune has changed a little bit over the years.

My dad gave me some unintended lessons along the way, too. I remember one day when I was very young, he let me sit on his lap while he drove me around a neighborhood near our house. I still remember thinking, “I probably shouldn’t be doing this,” but reveling in how it felt to sit in the driver’s seat, my hands on the wheel, viewing the road as it stretched out ahead of us rather than my usual view out the side window from the back seat. My legs barely stretched past his knees, but it made me feel powerful and gave me a glimpse of what it was like to be more grown up. 

My parents taught more intentional lessons for sure, lessons about hard work and trust and responsibility, but it’s these unintentional lessons that come back to me more often: Mom’s quiet entreaty to stand up tall and proud, her dedication in teaching us to love and understand the Bible, and Dad letting me sit in the driver’s seat, which to him may have been nothing more than a way to entertain a 6-year-old. But for me it showed that he trusted me, something that has followed me my whole life. 

These accidental lessons remind me that my own children are absorbing the same from me — things I unconsciously teach them while I’m actually working hard to teach them other, more meaningful lessons. And those more meaningful lessons will likely come on their own, whether I force them or not, but the smaller (though no less significant) lessons are the ones that they may remember decades from now, maybe even teaching them to their own kids. 

And as usual, I’m thoroughly daunted by how monumental the task of parenting is. I can only hope the things I’m unintentionally burying down deep in them during these childhood years turn out to be as helpful and useful as the ones in me. Though I still stumble over those Old Testament prophets.

My novels “The Hideaway” and “Hurricane Season” are available wherever books are sold. “Glory Road” releases in March 2019. You can reach me by email at Lauren @LaurenKDenton.com, visit my website LaurenKDenton.com or find me onInstagram @LaurenKDentonBooks, Twitter @LaurenKDenton or on Facebook @ LaurenKDentonAuthor.