personalblog

lessons from boyhood.

Natalie Price

Life is full of surprises. That’s the simple way of saying that we live in a world of endless uncertainty, at least. It doesn’t stop us from hoping or planning, from forming expectations for how we think our lives will turn out. I always thought I’d have three kids, all close together in age. I thought I’d have a mini me and a minivan. My life would feel as happy and put together as our family photos on the wall, coordinated and polished.

These days, the only thing polished about me is my nails, a necessary habit to keep me from anxiously destroying my nailbeds with my last nerve. Needless to say, I never became a mother of daughters. I don’t drive around town in a 7-seater with an automatic door-close feature, but maybe someday I will. I work between school drop-offs and pick up forgotten Hot Wheels that have been launched off my front porch. 

I live in the land of boyhood. And in some ways, I always have. I never had a sister, and neither did Hunter. I have always disliked jewelry and dressing up. Instead, I liked playing catch and trading Pokémon cards. My parents burned holes in the backs of their eyelids from how often they had to tell me to put my knees down at the dinner table and stop slouching over my steamed broccoli. To no one’s surprise, I failed etiquette class in my adolescence, and my Girl Scout leaders rued the day they ever let me join their troop.

Still, I wrestled with just being a boy mom for years. Because there’s a world where I’ll dance with my sons at their weddings, but my husband will watch every dance from his seat. I worry that maternal grandmothers tend to have more opportunities with their grandkids than paternal ones. I’ll just have to wait and see when it’s my turn. Time with sons feels more finite; their independence comes sooner. A decade from now, Griffin will turn his tassel just after he turns 18. Maybe the pain of realizing this over the last several months has kept me more present, more attuned to the reality of time.

I don’t know how to process the transition of boyhood to adulthood yet. There’s always a thought in the back of my head that I’m traumatizing my kids with my parenting, fearing what their future therapists might think of me. So I’m trying to savor this. These moments, this time of our lives. There will never be another world where Nolan is 6, and I’m 33 at the same time. I know very little about parenting, but I am learning a few things about raising only boys. And raising boys is teaching me a few things about life. And it’s a life I’m learning to love.

Raising boys is loud, and it’s confrontational. Maybe girls are loud too. But in my house, the decibels reach another stratosphere. Whether they’re happy, mad, or sad, it’s deafening. Arguments are more common than quiet. Their conflict is volcanic, and then it solidifies just as quickly as it started.

I used to want to jump into every altercation between brothers. But coming from a family of four boys, Hunter has helped me see that brothers who figure out how to work through dissension become bonded and eventually become better leaders. In the times when we choose to let them work it out, we’ve overheard them exchange apologies, or we’ve seen them hug it out. Laughter often follows. My being okay with their conflict has helped them strengthen their communication and collaboration skills faster than talking at them in my frustration.

Because boyhood is physical. Boys do not have an off switch; they have an energy dial. There is always energy. It’s solely a matter of how intense it can become. So we have an over-the-door basketball hoop, NERF guns, and an indoor football for Midwest winters. Our version of home decor is solely throw pillows, which often become weaponized during impromptu wrestling matches.

Speaking of wrestling, I’m learning it is an underappreciated art of working out boy energy. Once its biggest critic, I am now a proponent of letting my kids wrestle on the carpet after dinner. Yes, someone always gets hurt. But also yes, they laugh with their dad. They learn their own capacity and how to fight fair. They learn their limitations and how to read the limits of other people.

Nolan puts holes in every pair of pants or pajamas he has ever owned. Learning is hands-on. They learn to measure risk by jumping off things. So there is one couch in my house where that is allowed within reason. They’re rough on their shoes from playing so long outdoors. Dirt often gets tracked into the house. Bugs are beloved creatures. Monster drawings are some of my most prized possessions. Griffin’s football cards often get categorized and ranked on rugs.

Crumbs get dropped on the floor. Ants in the house become a lesson in picking up after ourselves. As a recovering perfectionist, I’ve come to prefer worn-out shoes from kids who play in the mud to pristine children who haven’t yet discovered the gift of adventure.

Some day I’ll miss seeing LEGOs splayed out. I’ll miss having to toss out worn-out socks and making chicken fingers with Nolan’s specialty sauce, Ranch-Up (that’s ranch and ketchup stirred together). For so long, I dreamed of having an immaculate house. But now, I’m learning to let the boys decorate their walls with their own art and line their dressers with knick-knacks they proudly made. I function better when everything’s all picked up, but I’m slowly adjusting my definition of clean. Boyhood has changed me. I’m not the mom I thought I’d be, but I’m becoming a better me.

As someone who has always sweated the small stuff, bringing up boys has been a crash course in learning to not sweat so much. I now understand why we don’t need to buy nice things. They’re just things. And they often get stained, torn, broken, or worn out faster than I plan. Through parenthood, I’m discovering the gift of experiences. Spending a small fortune on taking them to the movies and eating overpriced, over-buttered popcorn is worth the price of seeing them come home and continue to live in their imaginations. A large patch of backyard is grassless from where the boys have dug and made dirt ramps for monster trucks. The only price we pay is annoying our neighbors with views of toy dump trucks and shovels.

I’m also practicing saying less. When discipline is necessary, I tend to gravitate towards long explanations, ensuring that I’m understood. What I’ve created are kids who, in turn, give me long explanations for their excuses. I’m in the process of course correcting and practicing being clearer and more concise. In the earlier years, we worked on expanding their emotional vocabulary and when and how to express what they felt. I hope my simplification helps them continue to articulate how they feel and then become solution-oriented faster.

Griffin is teaching me that confidence is a choice. Sure, everyone may start out with varying degrees of it. But you can build on what you have and become a stronger person. Self-doubt is a choice, too. What we do with our agency determines our growth. Griffin loves to sing. And he loves to sing loudly, of course. During the last week of school, he had the opportunity to sing in class during a talent day, so he picked a song he loved. When he came home, he shared that two friends were laughing at him and said his song was stupid. When I asked if they shared any of their talents with the class, he said no. We talked about how their failure to be vulnerable themselves rendered their opinions of him null and void. 

Character is built through practice. Grit grows from doing hard things. Griffin puts in more effort than anyone I’ve ever met. And he’s still singing.

Nolan is showing me how fun life is when you choose to be carefree and give of yourself. He colors outside the lines on purpose. He wears long, silly socks with shorts because looking at them makes him happy. He’s not concerned about fitting any mold. Nolan loves laughing, storytelling, and creativity. He’s Griffin’s most faithful companion. Since his toddler years, he’s had a natural willingness to share his food, his toys, or his time. Nolan teaches us the art of levity and loyalty.

Boyhood demands all of you, and I’m not always all the way here. Some days, the stress of all their experimental messes and short attention spans gets to me. Most days, I wonder if all their arguing is going to be what takes me out. Nearly every day, my Apple watch tells me that “repeated, long-term exposure to sounds at this level can damage your hearing.” Great. So now I have to save up for hearing aids before I’m even eligible for Medicare.

But the gift of loving the life I have is the assurance that there’s nowhere else I’d rather be. This is it. Unless God deems otherwise, I am a boy mom to two very different personalities with infinite opportunities to depend on Jesus to be the mom they need. Before I know it, we won’t have to bleach the toilets every Wednesday night to sterilize all their missed attempts. We won’t be shoveling food in our mouths before practices or signing them up for summer camps. Some day I’ll tell their kids about how they made their own dart board out of the drywall and overflowed the bathtub while wearing goggles.

But for now, I’ll enjoy cleaning grass off of cleats and seeing dirty handprints on windows. Signs that boys live here. And that these are the golden days.

Long live boyhood.

Take care & take heart,

good (old) days. [pt. 1]

Natalie Price

As a 90’s kid, I was a self-proclaimed tomboy, often wearing oversized camp t-shirts and checkered hand-me-down Umbro soccer shorts. I pulled my hair back with scrunchies and left the straight across bangs my mom cut to fend for themselves on my forehead. When she had her way, I was in cotton floral dresses with a brush run through my hair. I had two brothers who shared a wallpapered room with bunk beds and a love for Star Wars. As the youngest, I was strong-willed and strong-minded, often getting told by elementary school teachers that I talked too much at carpet time.

We lived on the same block as my grandparents, who had a pantry stocked with Nutty Buddy’s, Star Crunch cookies, and Teddy Grahams. Mom would pick up the landline to give a heads-up that my brothers and I were coming. We’d race through the neighbor’s backyard into their back door, often met with the smell of sourdough bread and fabric softener. We’d fight over which color silly straw we wanted for our can of pop, to the sound of the laundry beeping from the room just off the kitchen.

One of the first chores I remember having was shucking corn outside our closed-in patio. Sitting in a white plastic chair, I’d toss the husks into a paper bag from Shop ‘n Save before returning the ears inside to my mom. After dinner in the summertime, we’d ride bikes around the block with the neighborhood kids or play catch behind our house. When Dad had free time, we’d play Around the World on the basketball hoop. Sometimes we’d go to the park and swing till we were dizzy, begging to be pushed or given an underdog just one more time.

Nearly every week, Dad would shuffle us to Family Video to pick out movies for the weekend. I would run in and go straight to the Mary-Kate and Ashley VHS tapes, hoping Holiday in the Sun was there. Our freezer held a safety stock of TV dinners, and my favorite was Salisbury steak with corn and a brownie. I’d get in trouble for not wiping down the TV tray before putting it back in the coat closet, where we stored them. Our pantry was too small to hold whatever health fad my parents were into at the time, but the most memorable was the Hallelujah diet. A fitting name for a pastor’s family, my brothers and I suffered through carrot juice cleanses, the disrupting smell of BarleyMax powder, and watching stiff videos discussing the differences between “live” and “dead” food.

When we didn’t have school and the weather permitted, we had to run two miles, down to the stop sign at the other end of the subdivision and back. It was a love/hate relationship for me, but what was funnier was seeing whether my brother was going to throw up by the end of his run. Back then, my cousin in DeKalb and I committed to being faithful pen pals. I’d walk my latest letter to the mailbox with stationery I got for my birthday and anxiously await her reply.

On the occasional Saturday night, we’d pack into the minivan and head to church, stuffing bulletins for the next morning. I’d pull open the drawer I was looking for, and white containers labeled “SortKwik” in pink and black lettering would roll from inertia into view. Standing on a stepstool in pajamas, I’d swipe my fingers over the pink moisturizer and stuff as many message notes as possible into the folds of paper. I can still hear the sound of Dad cutting the paper with the X-Acto, before stacking the half sheets with precision and handing them off to us. Sometimes we’d sing while we worked, and sometimes my oldest brother would make us laugh. When we were done, we’d turn the lights off and drive home together as it got dark.

The best days, though, were library days. The drive downtown felt eternal, but the smell of paperbacks was ceremonious. When I was old enough, I’d go unaccompanied to the children’s section and find the next Boxcar Children book in the series. After wandering the rows of shelving, I’d plop into a beanbag chair and lose all concept of time. The fluorescent lights would flicker above my head, and I’d notice I had goosebumps on my legs. Whether it be from the air conditioning contrasting the hot day outside or my awe for the story, it was hard to say.

I’d eventually find Dad in another wing of the library, looking at the At Home in Mitford book series on cassette tape. We’d wait to check out at the circulation desk before walking out with arms full, eyes adjusting to the sunshine once again.

Memories like these are roads my mind drives down when life seems all-encompassing. Some people think it’s a waste of time to look back on what we can’t change, or to miss what we can no longer have. I disagree. Having to rewind the videotape in the VCR at home before returning it to Blockbuster without a fine isn’t exactly what I would call simpler times. It’s not the outdated technology that I miss.

It’s the sense of familiarity.

The knowing what to expect and being surprised by the stories I found in the library, all at once. Being able to bet on my grandma being in her kitchen when I came over, or that Dad would have enough Breyer’s stocked in the freezer. Knowing that on Sundays, we’d go to China Star Buffet with my cousins after church. In a world that keeps on changing, with mental pressure to always be improving, I just want to live like a kid again.

Where certainty and spontaneity collide and create the fun we didn’t know we needed.

Where the ordinary things earn significance over time.

Take care & take heart,

longitudinal leadership. [pt. 3]

Natalie Price

Longitude measures both distance and time. Depending on your approximate distance to the equator, one degree of longitude is around 54.6 miles. The Earth rotates on its axis, and as we learned in school, it takes 24 hours to complete a 360-degree rotation. So if one degree of longitude is ~54.6 miles, one degree of longitude equates to around 4 minutes.

Leadership, less scientifically, can be measured by distance and time, too. I’ve been a leader in my current role for nearly ten years. Spanning the last decade, there were seasons when I led people poorly. There were seasons I shifted perspectives about people or processes I once held. I logged mileage with people through crucial conversations and regular feedback. The sum of my leadership so far is ten years plus the experiential distance I’ve walked with the people in my organization.

King Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes that there is nothing new under the sun. There’s nothing inherently new about leadership. But what is most fascinating is that people can always learn leadership lessons that feel new to them. Cue distance and time. I was only a 23-year-old leader for one year. And so were you. In that year, I navigated life as a newlywed, in a new state, leading at a new company, in a new field. By the time I was a 24-year-old leader, I was an expectant mom who had worked through hours of conflict and scenarios needing solutions. I was not the same leader. I had grown. Longitude was at work in my life.

My dad often shares a variation of the phrase, “People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed or told.” I’ve found that to be true. I read the same book every January. And every January, I am impacted in fresh ways. Why? Because the time that has passed and the intentional distance I’ve traveled in my leadership have changed me. Old information can be received with new eyes.

This chapter of my leadership has tempted me to drift. It’s cost me a lot of time to process through what’s unclear and what I can control. Building leadership muscle requires endurance through challenges and takes time. And I’m tired. I’m really tired. I’ve let discouragement take me downstream. I’ve wrestled with tough decisions. I’ve stared at empty journal pages without a single idea of where to start.

As I share my final observation about leadership lately, I resolve to lead better at 33 than I did at 23. So I’ll keep looking to the lives of seasoned leaders, of resilient leaders, of humble leaders to teach me more. This is what they’re teaching me.

3) Leaders are lifters.

Last week, a leader shared a story with me I’ve thought about every day since. He serves as a leader in the middle of his organization, hungry to keep growing. Towards the end of our conversation, I had asked him, “What do you really need to hear as a leader right now?”

He shared that a year ago, he was riddled with doubts about his future. Until someone saw him, really saw him, and the small impacts he was having in his role, and told him so. He heard for the first time in a long time that he had what it took to be great. “Someone believing in me was all I needed,” he said. One person shared true words that lifted another person. And it changed the trajectory of his leadership and set him on a focused path to the future.

His answer to my question was that he needed to hear that he has what it takes to be a leader of his own company someday. He needed to be reminded again. Because leadership is long-term and it’s linear. We can’t microwave time or skip past processing painful things and expect to lead wholly.

I love his story because I can see myself in it so clearly. I need to be reminded to keep going. To dig deeper. To keep showing up. To have the courage to share the last ten percent of the truth, even if it costs me favor with people. I need to be reminded often that I have what it takes.

We kept talking about what the options are when you’re leading from a place of discouragement. And we decided there aren’t many. But one choice is to choose to elevate the people around you. To choose to be the infusion of positivity where there is none. To uplift someone.

Because leaders are lifters.

Lifters are people who encourage someone through words, their presence, their prayers, or their questions. David Brooks, in his book How to Know a Person, calls these people illuminators. They can lift a room with their spirit. They can speak power into people with their words.

If I were to measure my life by the number of lifters I have in my corner, I’m rich.

I learned that leaders are lifters from my dad. If this idea sounds original, I can take no credit. He sees people for who Jesus made them to be, and he never wastes an opportunity to tell people that. Throughout my whole life, when I walk with my dad, we always stop so he can tell someone he appreciates how great their yard looks and thanks them for the work they put into it. We pause to learn someone’s name. I’ve heard him tell his pharmacist in the middle of Sam’s Club that she does amazing work and she’s great with people, because it’s the truth.

He is the most authentic, naturally incisive person because he pays attention to the small details that make up a person’s life. And then chooses to tell them that what they see may as mundane is actually magnificent. He’s a lifter.

Rob and Lisa Burris light up every room. I became friends with their daughter, Grace, twenty years ago. I have since been on the receiving end of texts on my kids’ birthdays, a Starbucks dropped off when I’ve been at work, and impromptu invites for coffee and convos. When they heard I was traveling abroad, a generous envelope appeared right before my trip. A permission slip to have fun. If I were to write down all the ways they’ve illuminated lives, there wouldn’t be enough ink in the world to chronicle it.

Uncle Rob and Aunt B are everyone’s cheerleaders. They make you feel like their lives are better because you’re in it. What likely costs them time and effort feels effortless because they pay attention to each person’s unique love language. Then they learn how to speak it fluently. They always show up. In all the ways. The good, the hard, the fun, the heavy. With all the love.

My grandparents prayed for me every day. I don’t doubt that, I know that. I sensed it. In their later years, this is how they spent much of their time. They were excited if I shared something new with them, because that meant they could continue to pray for me, together. They may have been physically weakened with age, but they were the most spiritually strong. It’s not lost on me that Christians use the phrase, “I’ll lift you up in prayer.” If Gary and Janie Nelsen said this, they fulfilled it. Tenfold. Always lifters.

My friend Catherine asks great questions. Questions can open a person up to think, to interact, to share. Catherine is amazing at always showing interest in what a person may think or feel. She asks meaningful follow-up questions and responds thoughtfully. I believe this is what Amy Edmondson had in mind when she introduced the idea of psychological safety. Trusting that a person has an interest in what you have to share is not as common as before. Catherine is a lifter because she uses her wonder to encourage others by staying curious for their answer. Every time.

These are stories of six ordinary people, out of so many amazing people in my life. Some have been leaders in their professional lives; all have been professional encouragers all their lives. They lead their lives with clarity and intention. Their focus is outward, on other people. We all need lifters in our lives. We all need to be buoyed up when the undertow of discouragement threatens to take us under.

In a season where I’ve felt exceptionally disheartened, I’ve looked to the lifters for direction. And what I’ve learned is that they all go through challenges, too. But if I can speak a kind word, if I can choose to show up, to pray, or to offer someone the space to process by asking helpful questions, I may find the encouragement I’m looking for through lifting someone else up.

Leadership is powerful because it’s the ability to influence and inspire others towards a shared goal. Leaders, by this definition, must elevate the people they lead. They have to invigorate their teams. Encouragement, then, is not optional. It’s vital.

Truett Cathy once said, “You know the best way to tell if someone needs encouragement? If they’re breathing!”

Be a lifter. You have everything it takes.

Take care & take heart,