The time seems ripe for a re-post of what is (at least by my own appraisal) one of the best things I've ever posted in this humble space, so I commend this to your consideration once again. . .
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Over the course of my nearly 40 years of parenthood, I have come to the conclusion that parenthood is, by its very nature, inherently heart-breaking.
That is not, by any means, to adopt a cynical or 'woe-is-me' attitude to the biggest, best, and noblest thing I've done with my life thus far (however poorly I've actually done it; and the empirical evidence is pretty damning). It is to say that, one way or another, our kids will, inevitably, disappoint us; sometimes crushingly so. And that the heartbreak of parenting is one of the main ways that we fulfil what Mother Theresa liked to refer to as 'our main task in this life' - 'to learn what it really means to love'.
When my kids were born, I held such high hopes and dreams for them. Not, to be sure, that I had 'The Plan' for their lives, or anything like that. I actually looked forward to the adventure of finding out who they were, and what amazing and wonderful traits they would blend from Jenn and me into their own, unique selves, and what traits of theirs might go off in some entirely unforeseen directions.
And it has been wonderful to see all their lives unfold. Several of our kids are very musical - 1F, 3M and 7M perhaps most especially. 3M and 8M are near-genius bright. 4M and 6F are both hard-working and good-looking, and 4M and 7M were star athletes (sometimes I wonder how these kids ever came from me; Jenn assures me that they did). 1F, 2F, 5M and 8M are all very kind and compassionate. And so it goes.
But our kids, being, alas, human (wait, that doesn't sound right; I'm really, really glad that they aren't newts, or tapeworms, or whatever), are subject to the effects of The Fall, just like Jenn and I are (well, I know that I am; I'm pretty sure that she is, too, but her case is less obvious than mine). And therein lie the seeds of heartbreak. In our early years of parenthood, we hoped to raise a family of kids who were better than we were - with all our strengths (which we were just arrogant enough to think were considerable), but none (or at least, not so many) of our weaknesses. We hoped that they would be smart, strong, wise, virtuous, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent, without all that nagging selfishness and venality. Because, of course, we were better than our own parents had been, right? (Well, of course not; but we thought we were. It's a Boomer thing.) And we would just impart our own superior wisdom, virtue, etc. to our kids, and all would be well. Right?
(*sigh*)
When 1F was in her teens, people used to congratulate us for having raised such a wonderful young woman. And I (perhaps inspired by a salutary humility; or perhaps merely prophesying a glimpse of the future) used to reply that it wasn't really wonderful teenagers I was after, but rather capable, wise and virtuous adults. And it wasn't too many years before my own words were borne out, to my own chagrin.
Back in the days when our older kids were passing through middle school, the Religion teacher (if that strikes your ear as a trifle odd, it's a Catholic school thing. . .) was a very wise woman, who became a good friend. In the course of a, uh, conversation we were having about one of our kids, who was proving to be a tad more intractable than we had planned on (but which didn't seem to faze her all that much), she told us, with a wistful maternal smile, that the day would inevitably come when we would find ourselves talking to the police about one of our children (and not necessarily the one we were discussing at the time); that it had happened to her, and that it happened to most parents sooner or later, no matter how earnest or capable they were, and that we shouldn't freak out when it did. And Jenn and I both shook our heads inwardly, certain in our own minds that her words were ridiculous, that such a thing would never happen to parents as conscientious as we were.
Such touching naivete, right?
It wasn't that many years later (distressingly few, in fact) that one of our kids (I'll decline to say which one) threw back at us, as I was retrieving him from a night in jail, that all of our kids down to him had now had run-ins with the police, and that, as far as he was concerned, that constituted slam-dunk definitive empirical proof that we were simply, utterly, execrable parents (OK, he didn't use the word 'execrable', but he used one of its synonyms). In the years since then, that flawless record has been extended by a few kids younger than him.
I have written elsewhere of some of the youthful (or even not-so-youthful) misadventures of our older kids. I won't rehash them for you here (and I think I've mostly taken those posts down from my old blog), but trust me when I say that we were utterly, absolutely flabbergasted. We'd said and done all the right things, as best we could see, and as best we were able (well, you know, aside from a certain proclivity to outbursts of temper, and a few (*ahem*) minor character flaws on that order; but God understands our weakness, right?), and it hadn't been enough. And I can tell you that it hasn't ended with them; our younger kids have made their own significant contributions to the broken-ness of our hearts
It slowly dawned on us (perhaps a good bit more slowly than it should have, but both Jenn and I had been 'good kids', so our own experience had left us a tad ill-equipped to deal with kids who were less 'with the program' than we'd been) that God, in his wisdom, had blessed our children, just as he'd blessed us, with Free Will (what He was thinking when He did that, I've had occasion to wonder). And that, our own earnestness and sincerity notwithstanding, our kids, even though made, as we were, in the Image and Likeness of God, were also, as we were, subject to the effects of The Fall, and capable of the same sorts of jaw-dropping venality we were; sometimes, even moreso. Even astoundingly moreso.
Taken all together, in the fullness of time it became an occasion of deeper insight into what it means to be human, to carry simultaneously within ourselves, and virtually side-by-side, both significant markers of divinity, and appalling selfishness and venality. And to learn, on a deep, down-and-dirty level, what Jesus was talking about when he said (in so many words) that the measure of love isn't how you treat agreeable, congenial people, but rather, in how you deal with (as Thomas a Kempis called them in The Imitation of Christ) "hard, obstinate and undisciplined people". Which is to say, people like our kids. And us. At least, some of the time (distressingly much of it, to be brutally candid). Put another way - it's not the absence of heartbreak, or disappointment, that makes our lives successful, it's what we DO with the heartbreak that will, inevitably, come into our lives – can we let “love cover a multitude of sins”, or not?
So yeah - heartbreak is part of the deal. Our kids will never be as perfect as we wish they were, and their flaws will be all-too-evident (and the ones they've picked up from us will be duly galling). But somewhere along the way, we'll have made progress toward what Mother Theresa was talking about, learning 'what it really means to love'. . .
O Lord, have mercy. . .
Showing posts with label parenthood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label parenthood. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 10, 2018
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
Joy, Heartbreak and DNA
Yesterday was Epiphany, marking the end (at least in a liturgical sense) of the Christmas season, and the return of 'Real Life' after the time of celebration and feasting. And oh, yes. . . Real Life is most definitely upon us. . .
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I've written here, and in my previous blog, about my grandchild(ren), 1F's 'birth-daughter' (just recently turned 8 years old) and her adoptive siblings. And of how God, true to His Word, has indeed 'worked everything out for the good'.
You have probably also noticed that, since roughly a year ago or so, the frequency of my posts here has become considerably less. There are a variety of reasons for that, mainly subsumed under the heading of 'Real Life Hath Its Demands'.
-------------------------
And so it came to pass, late last spring, that one such Demand made itself known. 6F took Jen aside and told her that she, 6F, just barely turned 18, and not yet, at the time, graduated from high school, was pregnant.
(*sigh*)
You want to think that the younger kids, especially the girls, were paying attention when 1F was going through her own pregnancy. But. . . perhaps not. I don't know what it's like for women, exactly, but I know that most guys (and young guys most especially), faced with the immediate availability of sex, aren't so clear-headed as to say, "Wait. . . you could get pregnant. . ." or, "But we aren't married yet. . ." Maybe in my grandmother's day, but not just lately. (And perhaps the size of my own family will attest to my own uh, shortcomings as pertaining to self-control. . .) And, even so, the generation of a new human life loses none of its sacred wonder for the circumstances being, shall we say, somewhat sub-optimal.
6F's boyfriend is, on the whole, a solid kid, responsible, hard-working, etc. (by which I mean he's diligent, frugal and focused; the question of keeping wicks dry is a separate matter). We have thought that, if it should happen that way, we wouldn't have any serious objections to the two of them marrying. In, oh, say, five years, when they're both more, uh, grown up than they are now, and clearer on the distinction between being married and 'going steady' (though I doubt that anyone calls it that anymore). But this puts a whole new twist on timetables and suchlike, and adds pressure to the marriage (and the family) that they hope to form together.
We will see what we will see, of course, but Jen and I are mainly of the mind that, if the two of them can form a stable, loving marriage, that would be best all around, for all three of the principals. So we're basically of the mind that we will do all that we can to help the two of them form such a marriage, if they can. If. . .
-------------------------
So, our second grandchild (at least in biological terms) is on his way.
We had a couple months to digest 6F's news before 3M came to us with the news that his girlfriend was also pregnant. Again, wonderful - another new human life is arising from our gene pool. But again - carts and horses, and all that. . .
3M and his girlfriend have been together for nearly two years, and we had frankly thought that we'd be hearing wedding bells before too awfully much longer. 3M has been doing well on his job, and getting himself 'established' to the point that being a husband and father is not a crazy idea. The two of them want to get married, and almost certainly will. But their relationship has had some, uh, volatile tendencies in the time they've been together, and I worry just the least bit that this will put pressure on them to marry, possibly over their own nagging doubts.
But, you know, as with 6F, we view our role as helping them get to the best possible place together that they can, both for their sake and their unborn child's. . .
-------------------------
So, two grandchildren - our second and third - on the way, without any of our kids being married. But, you know, we could console ourselves to a considerable degree that both couples were on their way to marrying, even if (marriage-prep timetables being what they are in our Catholic diocese) the marriages won't happen until some time after the birth of the child. I'm not terribly concerned with appearances, or 'family honor', or anything like that; all I want is what's best for my own children, and their putative spouses, and the children that they've made together.
And then, a few weeks ago, 2F came to us with the news that she, too, was 'in the family way' (well, except for, you know, the whole 'family' bit). Which came to us, how shall I say? - completely out of left field, since 2F hasn't had a boyfriend, that we know of. Nonetheless, there it was. After a week or two had passed, and we'd had time to digest this latest bit of generational news, Jen asked 2F who the father was; she said she didn't know. And that's about all I'm going to say about that. . .
As you might imagine (or, you might not, I suppose), it's been a bit more challenging to find the silver linings to 2F's pregnancy, once you get past, "How wonderful - a new human life has come into being!" But, as they say, it is what it is. . .
-------------------------
It is an exceedingly fine line that we find ourselves walking, between, "we love you and we support you, and we're here for you," and, "this isn't how we raised you to behave; we're really not 'just-OK-with-it'." There is more than a trivial likelihood that any or all of my children, and their respective children, will have their lives go less well in the long run for being pregnant out-of-wedlock now. I have no desire to engage in an 'I-told-you-so-fest', either now or in the future. But I worry.
And, honestly, it's hard for me not to take it, on some deep, existential level, as an indictment of me as their father. "Train up a child in the way he should go," (Proverbs 22:6) and all that. And I'm well-aware of the correlation between young women getting pregnant out-of-wedlock, and their poor relationships with their own fathers. Not a happy thought for me, as I contemplate my own Judgment Day.
To say nothing of the fact that we still have two young sons not-yet-fully formed, ages 15 and 11, for whom this has become the centerpiece of our family's life these days. How must our admonitions to chastity and moral faithfulness look to them, when their own beloved elder siblings have tacitly demonstrated that Mom-and-Dad's moral teachings are not to be taken seriously?
So, I suppose we could use your prayers. We are genuinely happy, and just as genuinely perplexed. Walking such fine lines can be exhausting. And the fact that such a key component of our parental message to our kids has manifestly gone unheeded, if not outright ignored, is heartbreaking. But then we knew that. . .
-------------------------
I've written here, and in my previous blog, about my grandchild(ren), 1F's 'birth-daughter' (just recently turned 8 years old) and her adoptive siblings. And of how God, true to His Word, has indeed 'worked everything out for the good'.
You have probably also noticed that, since roughly a year ago or so, the frequency of my posts here has become considerably less. There are a variety of reasons for that, mainly subsumed under the heading of 'Real Life Hath Its Demands'.
-------------------------
And so it came to pass, late last spring, that one such Demand made itself known. 6F took Jen aside and told her that she, 6F, just barely turned 18, and not yet, at the time, graduated from high school, was pregnant.
(*sigh*)
You want to think that the younger kids, especially the girls, were paying attention when 1F was going through her own pregnancy. But. . . perhaps not. I don't know what it's like for women, exactly, but I know that most guys (and young guys most especially), faced with the immediate availability of sex, aren't so clear-headed as to say, "Wait. . . you could get pregnant. . ." or, "But we aren't married yet. . ." Maybe in my grandmother's day, but not just lately. (And perhaps the size of my own family will attest to my own uh, shortcomings as pertaining to self-control. . .) And, even so, the generation of a new human life loses none of its sacred wonder for the circumstances being, shall we say, somewhat sub-optimal.
6F's boyfriend is, on the whole, a solid kid, responsible, hard-working, etc. (by which I mean he's diligent, frugal and focused; the question of keeping wicks dry is a separate matter). We have thought that, if it should happen that way, we wouldn't have any serious objections to the two of them marrying. In, oh, say, five years, when they're both more, uh, grown up than they are now, and clearer on the distinction between being married and 'going steady' (though I doubt that anyone calls it that anymore). But this puts a whole new twist on timetables and suchlike, and adds pressure to the marriage (and the family) that they hope to form together.
We will see what we will see, of course, but Jen and I are mainly of the mind that, if the two of them can form a stable, loving marriage, that would be best all around, for all three of the principals. So we're basically of the mind that we will do all that we can to help the two of them form such a marriage, if they can. If. . .
-------------------------
So, our second grandchild (at least in biological terms) is on his way.
We had a couple months to digest 6F's news before 3M came to us with the news that his girlfriend was also pregnant. Again, wonderful - another new human life is arising from our gene pool. But again - carts and horses, and all that. . .
3M and his girlfriend have been together for nearly two years, and we had frankly thought that we'd be hearing wedding bells before too awfully much longer. 3M has been doing well on his job, and getting himself 'established' to the point that being a husband and father is not a crazy idea. The two of them want to get married, and almost certainly will. But their relationship has had some, uh, volatile tendencies in the time they've been together, and I worry just the least bit that this will put pressure on them to marry, possibly over their own nagging doubts.
But, you know, as with 6F, we view our role as helping them get to the best possible place together that they can, both for their sake and their unborn child's. . .
-------------------------
So, two grandchildren - our second and third - on the way, without any of our kids being married. But, you know, we could console ourselves to a considerable degree that both couples were on their way to marrying, even if (marriage-prep timetables being what they are in our Catholic diocese) the marriages won't happen until some time after the birth of the child. I'm not terribly concerned with appearances, or 'family honor', or anything like that; all I want is what's best for my own children, and their putative spouses, and the children that they've made together.
And then, a few weeks ago, 2F came to us with the news that she, too, was 'in the family way' (well, except for, you know, the whole 'family' bit). Which came to us, how shall I say? - completely out of left field, since 2F hasn't had a boyfriend, that we know of. Nonetheless, there it was. After a week or two had passed, and we'd had time to digest this latest bit of generational news, Jen asked 2F who the father was; she said she didn't know. And that's about all I'm going to say about that. . .
As you might imagine (or, you might not, I suppose), it's been a bit more challenging to find the silver linings to 2F's pregnancy, once you get past, "How wonderful - a new human life has come into being!" But, as they say, it is what it is. . .
-------------------------
It is an exceedingly fine line that we find ourselves walking, between, "we love you and we support you, and we're here for you," and, "this isn't how we raised you to behave; we're really not 'just-OK-with-it'." There is more than a trivial likelihood that any or all of my children, and their respective children, will have their lives go less well in the long run for being pregnant out-of-wedlock now. I have no desire to engage in an 'I-told-you-so-fest', either now or in the future. But I worry.
And, honestly, it's hard for me not to take it, on some deep, existential level, as an indictment of me as their father. "Train up a child in the way he should go," (Proverbs 22:6) and all that. And I'm well-aware of the correlation between young women getting pregnant out-of-wedlock, and their poor relationships with their own fathers. Not a happy thought for me, as I contemplate my own Judgment Day.
To say nothing of the fact that we still have two young sons not-yet-fully formed, ages 15 and 11, for whom this has become the centerpiece of our family's life these days. How must our admonitions to chastity and moral faithfulness look to them, when their own beloved elder siblings have tacitly demonstrated that Mom-and-Dad's moral teachings are not to be taken seriously?
So, I suppose we could use your prayers. We are genuinely happy, and just as genuinely perplexed. Walking such fine lines can be exhausting. And the fact that such a key component of our parental message to our kids has manifestly gone unheeded, if not outright ignored, is heartbreaking. But then we knew that. . .
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Heartbreak Is Part of the Deal. . .
OK, I promised that if/when I ever stop blogging, I'd leave this post at the top of the page, just in case anyone comes back here from time to time, this is what they'd see. . .
If I may say so myself, this is about the most important thing that I'll ever say in this humble blog. So there.
This post runs parallel to something I posted four-and-a-half years ago. It's not really a re-post, but the thoughts are pretty similar (that older post is pretty good in its own right, maybe even better than this one; go ahead and read it, too, if you're so inclined). . .
-------------------------
Over the course of my 30-or-so years of parenthood, I have come to the conclusion that parenthood is, by its very nature, inherently heart-breaking.
That is not, by any means, to adopt a cynical or 'woe-is-me' attitude to the biggest, best, and noblest thing I've done with my life thus far (however poorly I've actually done it; and the empirical evidence is pretty damning). It is to say that, one way or another, our kids will, inevitably, disappoint us; sometimes crushingly so. And that the heartbreak of parenting is one of the main ways that we fulfil what Mother Theresa liked to refer to as 'our main task in this life' - 'to learn what it really means to love'.
When my kids were born, I held such high hopes and dreams for them. Not, to be sure, that I had 'The Plan' for their lives, or anything like that. I actually looked forward to the adventure of finding out who they were, and what amazing and wonderful traits they would blend from Jen and me into their own, unique selves, and what traits of theirs might go off in some entirely unforeseen directions.
And it has been wonderful to see all their lives unfold. Several of our kids are very musical - 1F, 3M and 7M perhaps most especially. 3M, 7M and 8M are near-genius bright. 4M and 6F are both hard-working and good-looking, and 4M is a star athlete (sometimes I wonder how this kid ever came from me; Jen assures me that he did). 1F, 2F and 5M are all very kind and compassionate. And so it goes.
But our kids, being, alas, human (wait, that doesn't sound right; I'm really, really glad that they aren't newts, or tapeworms, or whatever), are subject to the effects of The Fall, just like Jen and I are (well, I know that I am; I'm pretty sure that she is, too). And therein lie the seeds of heartbreak. In our early years of parenthood, we hoped to raise a family of kids who were better than we were - with all our strengths (which we were just arrogant enough to think were considerable), but none (or at least, not so many) of our weaknesses. We hoped that they would be smart, strong, wise, virtuous, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent, without all that nagging selfishness and venality. Because, of course, we were better than our own parents had been, right? (Well, of course not; but we thought we were. It's a Boomer thing.) And we would just impart our own superior wisdom, virtue, etc. to our kids, and all would be well. Right?
(*sigh*)
When 1F was in her teens, people used to congratulate us for having raised such a wonderful young woman. And I (perhaps inspired by a salutary humility; or perhaps merely prophesying a glimpse of the future) used to reply that it wasn't really wonderful teenagers I was after, but rather capable, wise and virtuous adults. And it wasn't too many years before my own words were borne out, to my own chagrin.
Back in the days when our older kids were passing through middle school, the Religion teacher (if that strikes your ear as a trifle odd, it's a Catholic school thing. . .) was a very wise woman, who became a good friend. In the course of a, uh, conversation we were having about one of our kids, who was proving to be a tad more intractable than we had planned on (but which didn't seem to faze her all that much), she told us, with a wistful maternal smile, that the day would inevitably come when we would find ourselves talking to the police about one of our children (and not necessarily the one we were discussing at the time); that it had happened to her, and that it happened to most parents sooner or later, no matter how earnest or capable they were, and that we shouldn't freak out when it did. And Jen and I both shook our heads inwardly, certain in our own minds that her words were ridiculous, that such a thing would never happen to parents as conscientious as we were.
Such touching naivete, right?
It wasn't that many years later (distressingly few, in fact) that one of our kids (I'll decline to say which one) threw back at us, as I was retrieving him from a night in jail, that all of our kids down to him had now had run-ins with the police, and that, as far as he was concerned, that constituted slam-dunk definitive empirical proof that we were simply, utterly, execrable parents (OK, he didn't use the word 'execrable', but he used one of its synonyms). In the years since then, that flawless record has been extended by a few kids younger than him.
I have written elsewhere of some of the youthful (or even not-so-youthful) misadventures of our older kids. I won't rehash them for you here (and I think I've mostly taken those posts down from my old blog), but trust me when I say that we were utterly, absolutely flabbergasted. We'd said and done all the right things, as best we could see, and as best we were able (well, you know, aside from a certain proclivity to outbursts of temper, and a few (*ahem*) minor character flaws on that order; but God understands our weakness, right?), and it hadn't been enough. And I can tell you that it hasn't ended with them; our younger kids have made their own significant contributions to the broken-ness of our hearts
It slowly dawned on us (perhaps a good bit more slowly than it should have, but both Jen and I had been 'good kids', so our own experience had left us a tad ill-equipped to deal with kids who were less 'with the program' than we'd been) that God, in his wisdom, had blessed our children, just as he'd blessed us, with Free Will (what He was thinking when He did that, I've had occasion to wonder). And that, our own earnestness and sincerity notwithstanding, our kids, even though made, as we were, in the Image and Likeness of God, were also, as we were, subject to the effects of The Fall, and capable of the same sorts of jaw-dropping venality we were; sometimes, even moreso. Even astoundingly moreso.
Taken all together, in the fullness of time it became an occasion of deeper insight into what it means to be human, to carry simultaneously within ourselves, and virtually side-by-side, both significant markers of divinity, and appalling selfishness and venality. And to learn, on a deep, down-and-dirty level, what Jesus was talking about when he said (in so many words) that the measure of love isn't how you treat agreeable, congenial people, but rather, in how you deal with (as Thomas a Kempis called them in The Imitation of Christ) "hard, obstinate and undisciplined people". Which is to say, people like our kids. At least, some of the time (distressingly much of it, to be brutally candid). Put another way - it's not the absence of heartbreak, or disappointment, that makes our lives successful, it's what we DO with the heartbreak that will, inevitably, come into our lives – can we let “love cover a multitude of sins”, or not?
So yeah - heartbreak is part of the deal. Our kids will never be as perfect as we wish they were, and their flaws will be all-too-evident (and the ones they've picked up from us will be duly galling). But somewhere along the way, we'll have made progress toward what Mother Theresa was talking about, learning 'what it really means to love'. . .
*************************
And. . . heartbreak. . . I pre-posted this a couple weeks ago, before the events of this past Friday in Connecticut, which make my concerns seem. . . small. My heart breaks in two for all the families who will have gaping, bleeding holes in their hearts, and around their tables, where their children - their little children - or their parents, or their siblings, or their spouses, should have been this Christmas. I just can't grasp the brutal cruelty of it. Please join me in praying for them, and the entire community there. . .
GK Chesterton once said that, of all the doctrines of Christianity, none would seem to be more empirically obvious than that of the fallen-ness of human nature. How I wish that were even a little bit less true. . .
And then this - Jimmy Greene, whose six-year-old daughter, Ana Marquez-Greene, was among the slain, said, out of his grief, that "Ana beat us to Paradise." That father, whose heart is certainly broken in two, is my hero today. You get it, sir. . . you really do. . .
O Lord, have mercy. . .
If I may say so myself, this is about the most important thing that I'll ever say in this humble blog. So there.
This post runs parallel to something I posted four-and-a-half years ago. It's not really a re-post, but the thoughts are pretty similar (that older post is pretty good in its own right, maybe even better than this one; go ahead and read it, too, if you're so inclined). . .
-------------------------
Over the course of my 30-or-so years of parenthood, I have come to the conclusion that parenthood is, by its very nature, inherently heart-breaking.
That is not, by any means, to adopt a cynical or 'woe-is-me' attitude to the biggest, best, and noblest thing I've done with my life thus far (however poorly I've actually done it; and the empirical evidence is pretty damning). It is to say that, one way or another, our kids will, inevitably, disappoint us; sometimes crushingly so. And that the heartbreak of parenting is one of the main ways that we fulfil what Mother Theresa liked to refer to as 'our main task in this life' - 'to learn what it really means to love'.
When my kids were born, I held such high hopes and dreams for them. Not, to be sure, that I had 'The Plan' for their lives, or anything like that. I actually looked forward to the adventure of finding out who they were, and what amazing and wonderful traits they would blend from Jen and me into their own, unique selves, and what traits of theirs might go off in some entirely unforeseen directions.
And it has been wonderful to see all their lives unfold. Several of our kids are very musical - 1F, 3M and 7M perhaps most especially. 3M, 7M and 8M are near-genius bright. 4M and 6F are both hard-working and good-looking, and 4M is a star athlete (sometimes I wonder how this kid ever came from me; Jen assures me that he did). 1F, 2F and 5M are all very kind and compassionate. And so it goes.
But our kids, being, alas, human (wait, that doesn't sound right; I'm really, really glad that they aren't newts, or tapeworms, or whatever), are subject to the effects of The Fall, just like Jen and I are (well, I know that I am; I'm pretty sure that she is, too). And therein lie the seeds of heartbreak. In our early years of parenthood, we hoped to raise a family of kids who were better than we were - with all our strengths (which we were just arrogant enough to think were considerable), but none (or at least, not so many) of our weaknesses. We hoped that they would be smart, strong, wise, virtuous, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent, without all that nagging selfishness and venality. Because, of course, we were better than our own parents had been, right? (Well, of course not; but we thought we were. It's a Boomer thing.) And we would just impart our own superior wisdom, virtue, etc. to our kids, and all would be well. Right?
(*sigh*)
When 1F was in her teens, people used to congratulate us for having raised such a wonderful young woman. And I (perhaps inspired by a salutary humility; or perhaps merely prophesying a glimpse of the future) used to reply that it wasn't really wonderful teenagers I was after, but rather capable, wise and virtuous adults. And it wasn't too many years before my own words were borne out, to my own chagrin.
Back in the days when our older kids were passing through middle school, the Religion teacher (if that strikes your ear as a trifle odd, it's a Catholic school thing. . .) was a very wise woman, who became a good friend. In the course of a, uh, conversation we were having about one of our kids, who was proving to be a tad more intractable than we had planned on (but which didn't seem to faze her all that much), she told us, with a wistful maternal smile, that the day would inevitably come when we would find ourselves talking to the police about one of our children (and not necessarily the one we were discussing at the time); that it had happened to her, and that it happened to most parents sooner or later, no matter how earnest or capable they were, and that we shouldn't freak out when it did. And Jen and I both shook our heads inwardly, certain in our own minds that her words were ridiculous, that such a thing would never happen to parents as conscientious as we were.
Such touching naivete, right?
It wasn't that many years later (distressingly few, in fact) that one of our kids (I'll decline to say which one) threw back at us, as I was retrieving him from a night in jail, that all of our kids down to him had now had run-ins with the police, and that, as far as he was concerned, that constituted slam-dunk definitive empirical proof that we were simply, utterly, execrable parents (OK, he didn't use the word 'execrable', but he used one of its synonyms). In the years since then, that flawless record has been extended by a few kids younger than him.
I have written elsewhere of some of the youthful (or even not-so-youthful) misadventures of our older kids. I won't rehash them for you here (and I think I've mostly taken those posts down from my old blog), but trust me when I say that we were utterly, absolutely flabbergasted. We'd said and done all the right things, as best we could see, and as best we were able (well, you know, aside from a certain proclivity to outbursts of temper, and a few (*ahem*) minor character flaws on that order; but God understands our weakness, right?), and it hadn't been enough. And I can tell you that it hasn't ended with them; our younger kids have made their own significant contributions to the broken-ness of our hearts
It slowly dawned on us (perhaps a good bit more slowly than it should have, but both Jen and I had been 'good kids', so our own experience had left us a tad ill-equipped to deal with kids who were less 'with the program' than we'd been) that God, in his wisdom, had blessed our children, just as he'd blessed us, with Free Will (what He was thinking when He did that, I've had occasion to wonder). And that, our own earnestness and sincerity notwithstanding, our kids, even though made, as we were, in the Image and Likeness of God, were also, as we were, subject to the effects of The Fall, and capable of the same sorts of jaw-dropping venality we were; sometimes, even moreso. Even astoundingly moreso.
Taken all together, in the fullness of time it became an occasion of deeper insight into what it means to be human, to carry simultaneously within ourselves, and virtually side-by-side, both significant markers of divinity, and appalling selfishness and venality. And to learn, on a deep, down-and-dirty level, what Jesus was talking about when he said (in so many words) that the measure of love isn't how you treat agreeable, congenial people, but rather, in how you deal with (as Thomas a Kempis called them in The Imitation of Christ) "hard, obstinate and undisciplined people". Which is to say, people like our kids. At least, some of the time (distressingly much of it, to be brutally candid). Put another way - it's not the absence of heartbreak, or disappointment, that makes our lives successful, it's what we DO with the heartbreak that will, inevitably, come into our lives – can we let “love cover a multitude of sins”, or not?
So yeah - heartbreak is part of the deal. Our kids will never be as perfect as we wish they were, and their flaws will be all-too-evident (and the ones they've picked up from us will be duly galling). But somewhere along the way, we'll have made progress toward what Mother Theresa was talking about, learning 'what it really means to love'. . .
*************************
And. . . heartbreak. . . I pre-posted this a couple weeks ago, before the events of this past Friday in Connecticut, which make my concerns seem. . . small. My heart breaks in two for all the families who will have gaping, bleeding holes in their hearts, and around their tables, where their children - their little children - or their parents, or their siblings, or their spouses, should have been this Christmas. I just can't grasp the brutal cruelty of it. Please join me in praying for them, and the entire community there. . .
GK Chesterton once said that, of all the doctrines of Christianity, none would seem to be more empirically obvious than that of the fallen-ness of human nature. How I wish that were even a little bit less true. . .
And then this - Jimmy Greene, whose six-year-old daughter, Ana Marquez-Greene, was among the slain, said, out of his grief, that "Ana beat us to Paradise." That father, whose heart is certainly broken in two, is my hero today. You get it, sir. . . you really do. . .
O Lord, have mercy. . .
Monday, December 17, 2012
For Your Consideration. . .
I came across this today. Coming, as it does, in the aftermath of the Newtown tragedy, and in the wake of yesterday's post, it resonates with some of our experience. We've never feared for our lives with any of our kids, but we do understand what it's like to wonder what your kid is gonna do next, and what's gonna set him off this time? And to feel utterly helpless to do anything about it.
Friends of ours have dealt with something even closer to what Ms. Long describes - a grown son (brilliant, by the way; can't a few of these guys be dolts?) who would fly into rages and berate the stupidity of his parents, and any other authority figure at hand, and vandalize their house. He physically attacked his father (than whom he is considerably bigger) at least once, but thankfully, not with a weapon. But it's not a given that he never would.
I also understand the isolation that Ms. Long describes. I know another family whose mentally-ill son brought them unsolicited comments from 'friends', telling them what terrible parents they were, and that their son's deeds (which were suitably awful) were chargeable directly to their parental account. Thankfully, no-one has ever been quite so brash with us (frankly, it's doubtful anyone would say anything to us that we haven't already said to ourselves), and our children's misdeeds haven't landed them (or us) in the headlines (at least, not so far). But we have experienced some of our friendships becoming more 'distant' as doubts about our parental competence came to seem more plausible. (One of our friends did think it might be helpful to point out to us that "some people tell their children what to do, and they do it." Just, you know, in case we were wondering.)
As I've often said before, Jen and I have not been perfect parents (and if any of you have been, feel free to go ahead and chuck the first stone our way). But we've tried to do the best we could, and even so, our hearts have been broken. I think that might be one of the reasons that Newtown is hitting me so hard; I have some distant, dim idea of what it might have been like to be Adam Lanza's parents. . .
Friends of ours have dealt with something even closer to what Ms. Long describes - a grown son (brilliant, by the way; can't a few of these guys be dolts?) who would fly into rages and berate the stupidity of his parents, and any other authority figure at hand, and vandalize their house. He physically attacked his father (than whom he is considerably bigger) at least once, but thankfully, not with a weapon. But it's not a given that he never would.
I also understand the isolation that Ms. Long describes. I know another family whose mentally-ill son brought them unsolicited comments from 'friends', telling them what terrible parents they were, and that their son's deeds (which were suitably awful) were chargeable directly to their parental account. Thankfully, no-one has ever been quite so brash with us (frankly, it's doubtful anyone would say anything to us that we haven't already said to ourselves), and our children's misdeeds haven't landed them (or us) in the headlines (at least, not so far). But we have experienced some of our friendships becoming more 'distant' as doubts about our parental competence came to seem more plausible. (One of our friends did think it might be helpful to point out to us that "some people tell their children what to do, and they do it." Just, you know, in case we were wondering.)
As I've often said before, Jen and I have not been perfect parents (and if any of you have been, feel free to go ahead and chuck the first stone our way). But we've tried to do the best we could, and even so, our hearts have been broken. I think that might be one of the reasons that Newtown is hitting me so hard; I have some distant, dim idea of what it might have been like to be Adam Lanza's parents. . .
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