I am knowingly and willingly part of a parenting generation that feels the need to document everything about our kids -- birthdays, holidays, first steps, eating a popsicle, going potty, wearing mommy’s shoes, messes, sleeping in car seats. With our back pocket technology, documenting both the milestones and the mundane has become reflexive. But generations past have had little to show from their childhoods -- a hand-written baby book or a handful of pictures from their first decade of life.
My grandmother had a baby boy (my dad) in 1949.
I had a baby boy in 2014.
The documentation differences in those 65 years are extreme.
I found my dad’s tattered and frayed baby book back when I was in college. In the book, my grandmother had documented everything about him: every height, weight, funny goo-goo and gaa-gaa, and even a lock of his hair. When I found this book in an old box in a storage area, I ran to show my dad, thinking he’d want to pour over it and read about himself as a young child. Instead, he glanced down at it, smiled, and said, “You keep it.” I walked away baffled by his response, but glad to have the book in hand, a small piece of history in an otherwise undocumented life.
Recently, I dug out dad’s baby book again and set it next to my son’s to compare the lives of these baby boys so many years apart. And as I wrote and journaled about my son’s weight and height and new words and hair locks, I wondered if he’d one day read the details and be fascinated, or be like my dad and dismiss the whole thing?
And then it dawned on me, the reason why my dad didn’t care about the details in his baby book. He didn’t care about his childhood baby book because all that matters is that he had a baby book--a record of how precious he was to his mom at that time in his life. He can take one glance at that book and know he was loved, adored, and tenderly cared for. And if you’re reading this thinking, “Baby book? What baby book? My children will never know they were loved because I failed to document my kids’ lives in a baby book!”, don’t worry. Your twenty-first century social media posts, other people’s social media posts, and if nothing else, your phone’s photo library will certainly speak for itself. Because it isn’t really about the heights and weights and first teeth poking through; those things are just arrows pointing to a love so unspeakable that can never be accurately documented.
The Bible talks about a mother’s love being so dear, so strong. And it talks about the Father’s love as even greater. We are loved so well by Him, so perfectly. And while he does know every hair on our head and has numbered each of our days, he also has arrows pointing to his love -- the way the sun rises each morning, the embrace of a loved one, the kind words of a friend, and above all, the sacrifice of his Son’s life for our sins. So, whether or not my son takes an interest in his baby book when he’s grown doesn’t matter to me now. He has one! He is loved. And my prayer is that my love will simply point him to the One who loves perfectly.
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