Parenting | 100 Words

You Can Be Anything You Want To Be

May 10th, 2025
Mollie T. Cox

I snatched the sticker below as soon as I saw it because I believe we set others up for hardship, and sometimes failure, when we say, “You can be anything you want to be.

Taylor Swift’s parents believed she could be anything she wanted to be. They backed her with their wealth, connections, and a move to Nashville when she was thirteen.

Dolly Parton believed she could be anything she wanted to be. Though poor, her family recognized her gifts and sacrificially rallied around her with the skills and connections they did have.

What about the rest of us?

After years of observing, I believe it’s harder and takes longer to accept the reality of limited opportunities or a mismatch of abilities and dreams when parents, teachers, and friends spend years saying, “You can be anything you want to be.”

What am I learning to say when someone shares a dream?

“You can be whomever God wants you to be because he will bring the opportunities and equip you.”

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. Isaiah 55:9 ESV

Memories, Parenting

Perhaps I Did Do My Best

May 3rd, 2025
Mollie T. Cox

Memory, my dear Cecily, is the diary we all carry about with us.
Miss Prism, The Importance Of Being Earnest

Yes, but it usually chronicles the things that have never happened and couldn’t possibly have happened.
Cecily, The Importance of Being Earnest

I don’t believe my memories are my imagination, but I do know that memories are tricky. Sometimes I forget the victories and remember the struggles. Sometimes the opposite. As I think about raising my sons, my memories tell me I could have listened more or played more or many other things more.

Rarely does one get a chance to revisit past situations. Last month—as I cared nonstop for young children for days and days—I got that chance.

Through last month’s filter of sleep deprivation, constant action, fatigue, and rarely having solitude to think, the things I left unsaid and undone while raising my sons were not unreasonable. By reliving my circumstances when my own children were young, I now understand that the things that I wish I had made happen couldn’t possibly have happened.

Perhaps I did do my best. Like you.

Parenting

Advice From Another Mother

April 12th, 2025
Mollie T. Cox

… And since when is good advice criticism?”

“When it comes from your mother.“
For Better or Worse Comic July 9, 2024

Our children need a mother. As they age, they want a mother that doesn’t belong to them. They want the advice we would give—just not from our mouths.

When my children were younger, I found it odd that young adults seemed to be trading mothers. My cousin didn’t ask my aunt for advice. However, my cousin’s best friend did. My cousin turned to the mother of another friend.

Why?

My aunt listened sympathetically to the problems of her daughter’s peers—more sympathetically than she listened to my cousin.

Why?

Along the way, I learned that by the time my children really needed my counsel, baggage had accumulated on both sides. Even when baggage wasn’t an issue, as healthy adults who were finding their own identity, my sons wanted privacy. And a mother who wasn’t overly interested.

So, what’s a mother to do?

I pray that my children seek godly counsel. I pray that the right person is put in their path at the opportune time.

… But wisdom is with those who seek counsel.

Proverbs 13:10

Parenting

Keeping Easter

March 29th, 2025
Mollie T. Cox

Guess what I got in my Easter basket? Pink nail polish.

I hid candy from my childhood Easter baskets in my pockets. I snuck the candy into my mouth during worship.

I hope it doesn’t rain and spoil Easter for the children.

The statements above reveal a lot. The first was an interruption to my Easter Sunday School lesson about Jesus’s Resurrection.

Given my observations and childhood experiences, I desired to preserve the meaning of Easter. The cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches may choke the Word (Matthew 13:7), but I shouldn’t contribute.

What’s a mother to do? This may sound extreme, but I never gave my sons Easter baskets. My family hosted Easter egg hunts on Saturdays using Resurrection Eggs * that tell the Easter story. Eggs with candy were intermingled.

We had traditional Easter fun, but I separated it from the Easter morning celebration of the Resurrection. We dyed Easter eggs as a Spring activity. Weeks before Easter, we held mini-Easter egg hunts each morning. As the boys aged, they hid eggs for each other. Don’t worry. My sons got enough candy—half-price after Easter.

How do you counter the culture?

* Family Life Ministries

Memories, Parenting

Our Children’s Memories

January 4th, 2025
Mollie T. Cox

Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.
Dr. Seuss

My husband and I have spent a lot of time with our children. We’ve said a lot of things to them as well. Which activities and words were important? According to Dr. Seuss, the moments my children remembered.

Unfortunately, those moments are not always the ones I remember. These days, I’m surprised when my memories coincide with my sons’ memories.

“I don’t remember that” was my mother’s worse response to my vivid recollections. I vowed that I would remember what my children shared until I didn’t.

I’ve read that if you ask children from the same household to describe their childhood, you will get vastly differing accounts. My sister’s memories of our childhood compared to mine are consistent with this statement. Now I understand it wasn’t the overall experience that differed but rather our key moments.

What do I wish I had known? To slow down and think instead of rushing responses and experiences. The totality of a vacation is not as important as a remembered moment during a day.

May we all make the most of our 2025 moments.