Who Are You Being Called to Become?

I remember the day I found out I was pregnant.  Oh!  The drama!  As I lay there bawling on my cousin’s Vegas bathroom floor, I felt like the world as I knew it had just ended.  My personal Armageddon.

Quickly though, after I recovered from the shock, I realized that this “tragedy” was, in fact, a miracle, a gift, a moment beckoning me to rise to a higher level.  This was a call for me to step into a role I hadn’t bothered to imagine yet, to become a person I hadn’t met yet, and to find within me a well of strength, faith, compassion and commitment I didn’t know existed in this body I wear.

Fast forward a few years, and, once again…drama.  My relationship with my son’s father ended, and any dream I’d had of the three of us doing the Cosby thing was shattered.  Fortunately, our drama was mild compared to many of the stories I hear.  But, we created drama nonetheless.  I acknowledge my unique contributions.  I played the blame game, the I’m-the better-parent game, the how-can-you-treat-me-this-way-game.  But, eventually, just like the Day of the Two Dip Sticks, I had to stop.  Press pause on the woe-is-me victim script I was reading to myself, look for the miracle, the gift in all of this and recognize that the beckoning was once again upon me.

See, I believe that these experiences we call “struggle” or “challenge” or “drama” are moments calling us to connect with the best in ourselves.  Our parenting partnerships or lack thereof are no exception.  We all have our stories when it comes to our challenges with “the other parent”.  That’s real.  Sometimes they mistreat us, take us for granted, shortchange us.  True.  But, we can’t change them.  That’s real, too. 

What we can do is trust that somewhere in the drama there is a voice asking us to claim these challenges as tools to transform ourselves or just to discover what is best in us.

These days, my son’s father and I still have bouts of our special brand of drama.  They are typically brief and even laughable sometimes—a five-minute dispute over who really has the soccer uniform or whether I told him the teacher conference was at 4 or 4:30.   But even then, every once in a while, when I want to poke him in the eye just for emphasis…I stop.  I imagine him one-eyed, and then I hear that voice hollering at me, “Who is this moment calling you to become?”  I answer…and his sight is spared.

I’m curious.  Do the challenges you experience in your parenting relationships ever lift you up instead of bring you down?  Who do you think you are being called to become?

Talibah Mbonisi, founder of WeParent, is a Marketer by trade, a problem solver by nature and a mother by grace. She is also an unmarried co-parent navigating the path that will lead to a happy, healthy son, and a fulfilled, balanced Mama and Daddy.

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