All We Like Toddlers Have Gone Astray
“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Isaiah 53:6
Fists clenched and cheeks red with anger and frustration, my two-year-old son let out a piercing scream and then yelled “I want Mommy to go away.” Moments earlier, my little boy had been sweetly playing with his trucks when the timer I set to indicate playtime was over, rang out. The sounding of this klaxon alone did nothing--my strong-willed child just ignored it. But my appearance in his doorway moments later to move him toward our next activity precipitated an epic meltdown that left us both in tears. This was just another day in the life of a toddler and his mother during the pandemic winter.
What struck me--beyond his tiny fist, for which he was given a timeout, further escalating the tantrum--was in that moment I had this impulse to scoop him up and hold him close. Of course, I was also frustrated and angry. He had trashed his room during his timeout so on top of the emotional work to de-escalate and discipline a small person with limited social/emotional awareness, I would have to corral him into helping me clean up the mess. But overshadowing those emotions was this intense desire to hold my son and to take his frustration and anger off of him and into myself and leave him with peace and joy. I could empathize with him. I also do not like someone else asserting their will over me, even if it’s a Divine Will with the best intentions. It felt like once again, in the middle of the chaos, God stepped in to teach me something about Godself.
We’re in the middle of Holy Week, one of the most sacred times of the Christian faith. Those who put their faith in Jesus are asked to contemplate his passion and love for humanity, culminating in a willingness to take onto himself the sins and shortcomings of humanity and to destroy the power of evil and death that permeate our world. Though there are many ways to immerse oneself in aspects of the divine both during this time and throughout the year, for the past three years I have felt called to contemplate God through the act of carrying, delivering, and now raising a tiny human.
Let me just say that if the Book of Isaiah had been written by a mother, the imagery of wayward sheep in chapter 53 would surely be replaced with that of intransigent toddlers. My informal polling of friends and family has shown me that children are the absolute worst to the person they know loves them best. Quite often, that person is their mother. My son is a perfect, sweet angel with his preschool teachers who sing his praises on a regular basis, but it feels like he stores up all of the dregs of his humanity for me.
Nothing has taught me more about the wonder and mystery of God’s unwavering love and compassion for humanity coupled with divine wrath like parenting a toddler. If I, as a flawed human myself, plagued with my own tendencies toward rebellion against God’s goodness, can look at my tantruming child throwing his trucks around his room with an unwavering love, then perhaps that impulse comes from someplace holy--and wholly outside myself.
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My first taste of toddler waywardness came when my son was around 10 months old. For his entire life up until that day, he had primarily relied on me to care, feed, comfort, and tend to him. When he wasn’t napping or eating, we would take walks through Capitol Hill, Navy Yard, and the National Mall to do all sorts of activities, like going to the playground, riding on the Carousel, and exploring every kids’ play area we could find in various Smithsonians.
Until one day--which coincidentally happened to be Good Friday 2019--he completely refused to let me put him into his stroller. Just flat out, melted down, made himself limp, and refused to let me buckle him in. He’d shown signs of being his own person here and there, but this was the first time he really pushed back on me about something. And of all the fights to pick with me, this one was, at the time, the dumbest: we were getting ready to go to the swings, one of his favorite activities. Rather than overpowering him, I relented and let him crawl around the apartment and play with his toys. But as I did, it occurred to me that, to quote Sufjan Stevens, “in my best behavior, I am really just like him.”1
Even though I have “taste[d] and see[n] that the LORD is good” (Psalm 34:8), even though I have watched repeatedly how God has outdone me when it comes to planning and executing good things or taken really terrible things and made them good, I am still like my son, refusing a good will for the sake of asserting my own.
If sin can be defined as determining for ourselves what is good and bad, then toddlers illustrate this tendency on a minute-by-minute basis. So much of parenting toddlers is trying to keep them from killing themselves, hurting others, or destroying the world around them. If they have decided that something seems right, they will fight you relentlessly until you acquiesce to their vision of the world. And when you don’t--because most of the time their vision is based on asymmetric information and very little understanding of what leads to human flourishing--be prepared to rank number one on their s-list.
To quote St. Paul out of context, “this is a profound mystery, but I’m talking about Christ and the church.”2
That Good Friday, my son finally wanted to go out for a walk after his nap. By this time, it was raining. I had prepared a blessing for him: swings while it was still sunny. And he refused it.
How much of enjoying God’s goodness have I missed out on, because I was too insistent on my specific plans?
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What is amazing--beyond the fact that many parents, including myself, still have more children after dealing with this nonsense--is that God defines the divine-human relationship as that of Parent and child. Yes, it’s also Shepherd and sheep and Vine and branches, etc. But we’re not told to pray to “our Shepherd in heaven.” We’re told to pray to our Father. There’s a connection there that only now as a parent I realize is particularly deep.
In no other relationship have I experienced a deep and unchanging love while putting up with all kinds of frustrating and crazy-making behavior. I don’t enjoy every single moment of motherhood. I recently endured two very public tantrums on the same day, both of which made me regret being currently pregnant because I so wished I could pour myself a drink.3 But the love I have for my son is not based on feelings and is not dependent on his good behavior or cooperation. I love him because I just do. He’s my son because he just is. Our relationship is lopsided and always will be--he can never love me in the same way that I love him, nor do for me what I have done and will do for him. If I could, I would take his waywardness, his bad behavior, every bit of suffering he’ll experience, so he wouldn’t have to bear it.4 I can’t imagine that there is anything that could separate me from loving my son.
But I believe there is Someone who can take all of those things and who did, who loves even better than I could in my wildest imagination and motherly ambitions. This week, Christians around the world will stop what they’re doing to contemplate God’s unwavering love, the “passion” that Jesus had for the world. If you’re one of them, maybe take a minute to consider the toddlers--dearly loved and treasured no matter how many tantrums they throw.
Juliet Vedral is a writer/consultant, toddler-wrangler, and amateur shoe collector. Her writing about faith and pop culture has also appeared in Sojourners. A native New Yorker, she currently resides in Alexandria, VA, which is still a weird thing for her to say.
Just to clarify, to my knowledge, my two-year-old son is not a serial killer.
I’m sure a Theobro (™) will fight me on this, but I have definitely experienced more of the relationship between God and humanity as Parent/child than Groom/Bride.
I sometimes wonder if what feels like a delay in answered prayers is really just God being like “please go play in your room and just leave me alone for a minute k thanks bye.”
But I can’t--and shouldn’t-- so that’s why we have timeouts.