All of parenting requires faith. Not necessarily religion (although, for me it does include religion), but faith.

In Brene Brown’s book I’m reading right now—The Gifts of Imperfection, she defines faith as, “A place of mystery, where we find the courage to believe in what we cannot see and the strength to let go of our fear of uncertainty.”

We know some stuff, but there’s a lot we don’t know. And we can’t see the future (well, most of us can’t), so there’s no way of telling what the work we’re doing now means for the future. We don’t know who our kids are going to turn out to be or what they’re going to do with their lives.

We could be raising them exactly how we want to, with the important morals and values and belief systems in place. And then, they’ll grow up. They’ll make up their own minds, they’ll have their own opinions, their own way of doing things. They’ll experiment, they’ll try this on or that on, they’ll figure out who they are as a person—separate from us, their parents.

And we just don’t know how it’ll all pan out. There’s uncertainty. There’s fear. There’s worry. These are our babies. Lives that we’ve poured ourselves into. We want the best for them.

But then there’s the courage. And so, we can choose to be brave and believe we’re doing this right. That we’re giving our babies the tools they’ll need in life—to be kind, decent humans who will find joy and fulfillment.

And there’s the strength. Strength to work toward letting go of the “what if?” fears and the “I don’t know what we would do” worries and find the joy in the now.

And when in doubt, there’s always the serenity prayer, as Brene recommended at the end of the faith chapter. ❤️

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”