by Hettie Brittz

Have you ever watched ducklings on a lake, following their mommy duck in a perfectly straight line? You could almost imagine an invisible string keeping them strung together like pearls. It’s a serene picture of mothering contentment and obedient kids. That used to be my view of parenting. I’d be the mommy duck. My ducklings would always follow contentedly. They wouldn’t wade off into dangerous dark waters. They would always want to be with me …

Reality was a lot harder. I messed up right from the get-go. Instead of being the confident leader on the lake, I became a clueless duckling flapping helplessly on a string attached to several mommy ducks who seemed to know what they were doing. I tried to follow their example, read their books, implemented their advice and played supermom the way I saw them do it. There was nothing graceful about it. My mothering ways were stiff and mechanical, interspersed with insecure glances over my shoulder.

I suspect I am not alone in my splashing about. Many of us look up to other moms who seem to display the ten or twenty “most desirable traits”. Some moms find a really great example. They learn from her, follow her on the parenting lake, and see their well-behaved offspring perfectly in tow. But many don’t. Those who don’t want to swim with the matriarch, conforming to the flow, have to survive the assault on their individuality and live a life of defending their right to be unique within the boundaries of God’s Word. They stay on the lake but they swim differently. They swim in their own lane.

Personality, or more specifically the temperament we are born with, weighs heavily into how each of us swims through life. I love swimming and have always found it one of the most relaxing and invigorating forms of exercise. The water drowns out all the voices in my world, including the ones in my head. Everything goes quiet and I can think or think about nothing at all as I count the laps and follow the rhythm my lungs, heart and muscles fall into after the first few hundred meters.

If motherhood could be like this swim instead of the duck scenario, fewer of us would feel as though we’re drowning.

We have friends whose daughter nearly made it to the Olympics in Beijing. In preparation for it her father moved her form a club where she was the best swimmer to one where she may be challenged by faster athletes. After nervously waiting in the car while she had her first training session, he carefully pulsed, “So, did you have any competition today?” without missing beat she retorted,

“Not in my lane, Dad.”

Oh, to swim in our own lane instead of copying others, comparing ourselves or competing with one another! Paul encourages us in this when he talks about Spiritual living in Galatians 6:4-6

Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life (The Message).

Perhaps it is an important lesson for us all. Glancing at the ducks in a row on a lake, they may all look identical, but upon closer inspection, we’ll find uniqueness in each one. That uniqueness in humans can be found in DNA, types of intelligence, even taste in clothing. Differences are part of everything God created. One of the markers of uniqueness He gave each of us, is our temperament. In fact, the word temperament means “mixture”. God didn’t bake the whole batch of humankind with one duck-shaped cookie-cutter.

The beautiful reason is that temperament points to our God-given calling in much the same way a compass needle points to magnetic north. When we follow our inborn interests and tendencies, without indulging sin, we often find our way exactly to the thing we were created to invest our life in. However, when you wipe a strong magnet over the delicate needle of a compass, it loses its magnetic properties and spins around aimlessly. Similarly, people who have lost their God-given sense of self, may be like a duck swimming in circles. Strong mothering personalities in our lives, domineering parents with the opposite design to ours, criticism aimed at our parenting, and punitive discipline or a spiritual attack on us, can all act as demagnetizers.

Once I discover how God has made me, and I can embrace the value of swimming in my own lane, I no longer need to follow all the mothering examples around me. The legalistic books about “Becoming a ten out of ten Duck Mommy” or “How to swim so your ducklings will follow” no longer have a paralyzing effect on me. I read, select what works for the temperaments in my family on our pond, and enjoy the liberty in Christ that should, after all, filter through even to how I raise my kids.

Imagine a place where some moms are fast and furious, others are passive and pleased with the status quo; some are full of fun and surprises and the rest are constantly looking for the best way they can raise the best behaved kids. Can you see the potential for conflict in this diverse community? But, can you imagine the beauty if they all decided to mother and let mother; if they all decided to swim in their own lane? If they could foster a culture where the idea is to know and be known, to understand and be understood, to appreciate and be appreciated, and to mature into what we are meant to be, there could be whole relationships and a happy faith community.

If every mother figures out her own lane and how to swim in it, there still remains the matter of whether the ducklings will string along or not. We do want our kids to obey. We know it requires the right proportion of instruction and inspiration. Mothering in a way where all need to swim in sync to my set way, strung to me with string, has a good chance of alienating my kids. However, if I extended permission to find one’s own lane to my kids and encouraged them to explore the way God made them, and to develop their unique stroke in the lake of life, there would be a very good chance that they would want to stick around a little longer to learn from me how that is done.