Now I may have hurt my mom's feelings with that last post and so, in an effort to grow not only in love but in humility, I have to say that there are so many times when making life easier on the people around you is - most definitely - the loving thing to do. I am the envy of all my friends and colleagues when my mom comes to visit and have been the blessed recipient of my mom's TLC after giving birth and every single year during periods of stress when I've just needed an extra pair of hands around the house my mom dutifully flies across the country and makes everything better.
My struggle is the personal struggle of knowing how best to love a child depending on the situation, how to figure out what response is called for, and when to push them to meet a challenge and when to step in and help them out.
It's ironic because I work in a church, but I rarely turn to prayer to help me figure this stuff out. Maybe I should start...
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
To Love Is Not To Rescue
I had an interesting experience on Sunday that got me thinking.
I had asked a young man in our congregation who has autism to help lead the call to worship at church along with other members of his family. Seconds before the service was about to begin and just as we were all about to walk into the sanctuary this kid told me he was too nervous to speak into the microphone. Wanting to avoid any possible bad feelings I said, "that's okay; do whatever you feel comfortable with." And thinking I was being the epitome of the loving and compassionate minister I added, "your mom and your sister can take over if you're too nervous."
And then I listened as this young man said the same thing to one of the other ministers: "I'm too nervous to speak into the microphone," and this minister said, "you know, I get nervous speaking into a microphone too. We all get nervous, but you can do it," he said.
Sometimes in the attempt to be loving I take away a person's chance to do something hard. I now see that I do this all the time with my kids. "Oh, you go play and I'll make you a snack" I say to my nine-year-old who is more than capable of making his own snack. "Oh, don't worry about doing your after dinner chores tonight...you're tired - why don't you just go to bed" I say to the seven-year-old who is actually ready to learn how to push through being tired to give other people a hand now and again. Somewhere I got it into my head that to really love someone is to help make their life easier (says she whose own mother never sits down when she comes to visit but rushes about putting in a load of laundry or washing up the kitchen floor because it only takes a second and then it's done and you don't want to have to do it yourself, dear).
But I wonder whether rescuing people from the harder parts of life is really the most loving response? I wonder if the truly loving response to someone who is nervous or anxious or dealing with big responsibilities isn't to bolster their confidence instead, to remind them that they are capable people and that they have it in them to do hard things. How I wish I reminded this kid of all the other times he'd spoken with such courage at the front of our church. Instead, I showed my lack of confidence in him and in turn he passed the microphone to his sister when it came time to say his line during the call to worship.
It doesn't feel good not to have to rise to meet the challenges and responsibilities in our lives; it feels good when we surprise ourselves with how well we've dealt with the challenges and responsibilities that come our way. I need to remember this the next time one of my own kid faces a challenging situation: that the most loving response isn't to deal with the challenge for him or to remove it from her path, but to remind each that they have it within themselves to do the job, to accomplish the task, to rise to the occasion - that they are up to it, and that I'm up to cheering them on.
I had asked a young man in our congregation who has autism to help lead the call to worship at church along with other members of his family. Seconds before the service was about to begin and just as we were all about to walk into the sanctuary this kid told me he was too nervous to speak into the microphone. Wanting to avoid any possible bad feelings I said, "that's okay; do whatever you feel comfortable with." And thinking I was being the epitome of the loving and compassionate minister I added, "your mom and your sister can take over if you're too nervous."
And then I listened as this young man said the same thing to one of the other ministers: "I'm too nervous to speak into the microphone," and this minister said, "you know, I get nervous speaking into a microphone too. We all get nervous, but you can do it," he said.
Sometimes in the attempt to be loving I take away a person's chance to do something hard. I now see that I do this all the time with my kids. "Oh, you go play and I'll make you a snack" I say to my nine-year-old who is more than capable of making his own snack. "Oh, don't worry about doing your after dinner chores tonight...you're tired - why don't you just go to bed" I say to the seven-year-old who is actually ready to learn how to push through being tired to give other people a hand now and again. Somewhere I got it into my head that to really love someone is to help make their life easier (says she whose own mother never sits down when she comes to visit but rushes about putting in a load of laundry or washing up the kitchen floor because it only takes a second and then it's done and you don't want to have to do it yourself, dear).
But I wonder whether rescuing people from the harder parts of life is really the most loving response? I wonder if the truly loving response to someone who is nervous or anxious or dealing with big responsibilities isn't to bolster their confidence instead, to remind them that they are capable people and that they have it in them to do hard things. How I wish I reminded this kid of all the other times he'd spoken with such courage at the front of our church. Instead, I showed my lack of confidence in him and in turn he passed the microphone to his sister when it came time to say his line during the call to worship.
It doesn't feel good not to have to rise to meet the challenges and responsibilities in our lives; it feels good when we surprise ourselves with how well we've dealt with the challenges and responsibilities that come our way. I need to remember this the next time one of my own kid faces a challenging situation: that the most loving response isn't to deal with the challenge for him or to remove it from her path, but to remind each that they have it within themselves to do the job, to accomplish the task, to rise to the occasion - that they are up to it, and that I'm up to cheering them on.
Sunday, September 15, 2013
Ubi Caritas
I am learning that it is impossible to grow more loving without first growing in charity. Charity is what unblocks Love's dam; it is to Love what wine is to conversation, or grease to a pan, or wax to cross-country skis - Charity is Love's lubricant. Love doesn't flow as easily without Charity; and so comes the saying: where Charity is found, there is Love.
We tend to think that being charitable is something we can quantify in tangible terms: giving "x" amount of money to a certain cause, or donating our old clothes and books and furniture, or sharing our house or our car or our food with people in need. But being charitable can also mean being giving and generous with those things we can't quantify; giving of our patience and understanding and sympathy and forgiveness, and I think it's when we're really generous with these intangibles that we really grow in love for someone else.
Think how much we all love newborn babies, for example. We are so giving towards them! We get into their heads and try to imagine what life is like for them as a means of explaining their temperament. If they want to be held for hours on end we say "of course, imagine - they've just traveled from one world to another." If they are crying we commiserate and cuddle them, "after all," we say, "being born can't be that comfortable." We grow in love towards our newborn babies in large part because we are so charitable towards them that we can empathize with them and want to do everything we can to make them feel secure.
Does the perception that kids become more badly behaved as they grow older stem, in part, from a lack of charity on our part? What I mean is that when our children are newborns we tend to think that they're all good. If they're doing something irritating, like crying or clinging, we tend to rationalize that it's because they don't feel right on the inside. But as babies grow up we lose that charitable take on behaviour. A kid acting out doesn't have a problem that we can help them sort out, they are a problem. Take the young adults we hear about every September who are off to university or college for the first time and who binge drink and take part in all kinds of humiliating initiation pranks and chant lewd verses to songs they would never have sung a month ago at the cottage in front of their parents - are they a lost generation, or can we see that a whole whack of kids feel so insecure that they'll do anything, even stuff that's harmful and embarrassing, just to feel like they fit in? Which response makes you feel more loving?
We had a humbling experience this summer that really made me revisit the importance of charity in all our relationships as a means of facilitating love. One day on our summer vacation our little 18-month-old just changed personalities. This normally sunny little boy who rarely cried unless there was a reason became horribly cranky and he wouldn't let me put him down, and he squirmed when he had to get his diaper changed and screamed when I put him in his high chair. We couldn't see anything wrong with him - he didn't have any cuts or bruises - so we concluded that he must just be in a bad phase, the terrible twos must have started six months early. The next week we were visiting my parents and my dad, who is a doctor, noticed a lump that had formed on this boy's collar bone. It turned out he had somehow fractured his collar bone and the tricky thing with injuries to the collar bone is that you don't see the bump (which is the growth of the new bone over the injured area) until about a week after the damage has been done. Our baby didn't show any signs of physical distress on the outside and our lack of charity prevented us from seeing that his crying and clinging was because of pain he was feeling on the inside. We had passed off the effects of a fractured collar bone as "bad" behaviour!
We automatically become a lot more loving towards people if we decide that they are basically good and that any "bad" behaviour is actually a sign that something is not right with them on the inside. This doesn't mean we don't call people on their bad behaviour, but a commitment to charity does make it easier for us to approach others from a more loving place and get at the root of whatever problem is making life difficult for them at the moment.
We tend to think that being charitable is something we can quantify in tangible terms: giving "x" amount of money to a certain cause, or donating our old clothes and books and furniture, or sharing our house or our car or our food with people in need. But being charitable can also mean being giving and generous with those things we can't quantify; giving of our patience and understanding and sympathy and forgiveness, and I think it's when we're really generous with these intangibles that we really grow in love for someone else.
Think how much we all love newborn babies, for example. We are so giving towards them! We get into their heads and try to imagine what life is like for them as a means of explaining their temperament. If they want to be held for hours on end we say "of course, imagine - they've just traveled from one world to another." If they are crying we commiserate and cuddle them, "after all," we say, "being born can't be that comfortable." We grow in love towards our newborn babies in large part because we are so charitable towards them that we can empathize with them and want to do everything we can to make them feel secure.
Does the perception that kids become more badly behaved as they grow older stem, in part, from a lack of charity on our part? What I mean is that when our children are newborns we tend to think that they're all good. If they're doing something irritating, like crying or clinging, we tend to rationalize that it's because they don't feel right on the inside. But as babies grow up we lose that charitable take on behaviour. A kid acting out doesn't have a problem that we can help them sort out, they are a problem. Take the young adults we hear about every September who are off to university or college for the first time and who binge drink and take part in all kinds of humiliating initiation pranks and chant lewd verses to songs they would never have sung a month ago at the cottage in front of their parents - are they a lost generation, or can we see that a whole whack of kids feel so insecure that they'll do anything, even stuff that's harmful and embarrassing, just to feel like they fit in? Which response makes you feel more loving?
We had a humbling experience this summer that really made me revisit the importance of charity in all our relationships as a means of facilitating love. One day on our summer vacation our little 18-month-old just changed personalities. This normally sunny little boy who rarely cried unless there was a reason became horribly cranky and he wouldn't let me put him down, and he squirmed when he had to get his diaper changed and screamed when I put him in his high chair. We couldn't see anything wrong with him - he didn't have any cuts or bruises - so we concluded that he must just be in a bad phase, the terrible twos must have started six months early. The next week we were visiting my parents and my dad, who is a doctor, noticed a lump that had formed on this boy's collar bone. It turned out he had somehow fractured his collar bone and the tricky thing with injuries to the collar bone is that you don't see the bump (which is the growth of the new bone over the injured area) until about a week after the damage has been done. Our baby didn't show any signs of physical distress on the outside and our lack of charity prevented us from seeing that his crying and clinging was because of pain he was feeling on the inside. We had passed off the effects of a fractured collar bone as "bad" behaviour!
We automatically become a lot more loving towards people if we decide that they are basically good and that any "bad" behaviour is actually a sign that something is not right with them on the inside. This doesn't mean we don't call people on their bad behaviour, but a commitment to charity does make it easier for us to approach others from a more loving place and get at the root of whatever problem is making life difficult for them at the moment.
Tuesday, September 3, 2013
That All-Important First Look...
To my dear children,
You couldn't help but see JCPenney’s back-to-school commercials on TV this summer, the ads that featured the cute kids who tell you that “the only thing anyone really cares about” when it comes to school is that “first day” and the outfit you choose to wear. “I’ve been told this stuff can make or break your entire year,” you heard one mom say in another of the ads while you watched a visual of her son alone at the lunch table because he’s not wearing the right kind of clothes. According to the commercials you saw the most important task of the first day of school is to “cement your legacy of awesomeness with your first day look.” The ads would have you believe that without cool clothes you’ll never be more than just a big loser when it comes to school.
You already know that it is important to try to look your best. What we wear affects our confidence and other people’s confidence in us. Dressing sharply gives others the impression that they are important to us - worth making an effort for – and of course, our clothes are a great way to express ourselves and what we’re thinking: it’s not for nothing that the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institution just wrapped an exhibit of the safety-pinned leather jackets and tartan pants of the Punk era.
But children, please don’t listen to all the back-to-school ads that try to tell you that the sum of what you are is what you wear. Even the coolest clothes in the world won’t cement your “legacy of awesomeness” as much as your character will - at school or anywhere else.
I remember the outfit I chose for my first day of junior high. In elementary school a great outfit was simply an outfit in which I could play easily. But in junior high I would have to leave playing behind; a great outfit in junior high was an outfit that showed you were grown up.
I decided on a side ponytail (brushing my hair so carefully so that I wouldn’t have any “bumps”), a purple long-sleeved shirt and overalls – yes, overalls. I can’t tell you now just what I was thinking when I put this outfit together, but I can tell you that I put a lot of thought into it. When I said goodbye to my parents and road off on my bike to my new junior high school I was glowing – I felt so grown up.
Unfortunately this outfit did not “cement my legacy of awesomeness” as I hoped it would but instead cemented me as someone who, to this day, is always one step behind when it comes to fashion. The “grown up” and “cool” look that year, I soon discovered, wasn’t overalls at all but Levi’s 501 jeans, which weren’t available in the children’s department of the Bay, where I had done my back-to-school shopping with my mom.
What really makes or breaks us is being faithful to the principles we believe in, and one of the most important principles of any faith is being compassionate towards others.
One of the coolest boys at my junior high school was Jon (of course he spelled his name without an ‘h’) and I had a big crush on him. Because in most classes we were seated alphabetically myself and my friend, Kelly (who also happened to have a big crush on Jon), were the lucky girls who always got to sit next to him. Now Kelly and I were not the cool girls at our school (remember that I was the kid who wore overalls on the first day of gr. 7). If you were concerned about "cementing your legacy of awesomeness," you wouldn’t want to spend a lot of time talking to us.
But Jon was a different kind of cool because, while he always looked great on the outside, he was also a person of character - a genuinely nice guy with a lot of compassion for others. Most of the really popular people at my junior high were popular because they were somehow intimidating to the rest of us, but Jon was popular because he was kind. Everyone liked him because he really seemed to like everybody else. Everybody wanted to be around him because he made sure everybody around him was having fun. His jokes were funny, not just making fun, and to this day I can’t recall him ever saying a mean barb or sarcastic comment to anyone. If you polled the girls at our school I think you would have found that it wasn’t just Kelly and I who had a crush on him.
I never saw Jon after grade 9; we went to different high schools and I’m not sure where he’s at or what he’s up to today. He might have a great job, a big house, a lot of money, or he might not. But one thing is certain: he managed to cement a legacy of awesomeness not because he looked better than everybody else, but because he genuinely cared about everybody else. He didn’t stand out for me at the time because of what he might be some day, or how cool his clothes were or how many parties he got invited to; he stood out simply because he took a stand, for kindness, for compassion, for goodness, for fun, for friendship and, most importantly, for humility – for thinking of others now and again and not only of himself. Not surprisingly, he’s one of the only people whose names I can actually remember from my junior high school – a legacy of awesomeness if there ever was one.
So when you get dressed for that all-important first day back at school, don’t forget that nothing makes you look as good as all the goodness that’s already inside of you. Your character will always be your greatest accessory.
You couldn't help but see JCPenney’s back-to-school commercials on TV this summer, the ads that featured the cute kids who tell you that “the only thing anyone really cares about” when it comes to school is that “first day” and the outfit you choose to wear. “I’ve been told this stuff can make or break your entire year,” you heard one mom say in another of the ads while you watched a visual of her son alone at the lunch table because he’s not wearing the right kind of clothes. According to the commercials you saw the most important task of the first day of school is to “cement your legacy of awesomeness with your first day look.” The ads would have you believe that without cool clothes you’ll never be more than just a big loser when it comes to school.
You already know that it is important to try to look your best. What we wear affects our confidence and other people’s confidence in us. Dressing sharply gives others the impression that they are important to us - worth making an effort for – and of course, our clothes are a great way to express ourselves and what we’re thinking: it’s not for nothing that the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institution just wrapped an exhibit of the safety-pinned leather jackets and tartan pants of the Punk era.
But children, please don’t listen to all the back-to-school ads that try to tell you that the sum of what you are is what you wear. Even the coolest clothes in the world won’t cement your “legacy of awesomeness” as much as your character will - at school or anywhere else.
I remember the outfit I chose for my first day of junior high. In elementary school a great outfit was simply an outfit in which I could play easily. But in junior high I would have to leave playing behind; a great outfit in junior high was an outfit that showed you were grown up.
I decided on a side ponytail (brushing my hair so carefully so that I wouldn’t have any “bumps”), a purple long-sleeved shirt and overalls – yes, overalls. I can’t tell you now just what I was thinking when I put this outfit together, but I can tell you that I put a lot of thought into it. When I said goodbye to my parents and road off on my bike to my new junior high school I was glowing – I felt so grown up.
Unfortunately this outfit did not “cement my legacy of awesomeness” as I hoped it would but instead cemented me as someone who, to this day, is always one step behind when it comes to fashion. The “grown up” and “cool” look that year, I soon discovered, wasn’t overalls at all but Levi’s 501 jeans, which weren’t available in the children’s department of the Bay, where I had done my back-to-school shopping with my mom.
What really makes or breaks us is being faithful to the principles we believe in, and one of the most important principles of any faith is being compassionate towards others.
One of the coolest boys at my junior high school was Jon (of course he spelled his name without an ‘h’) and I had a big crush on him. Because in most classes we were seated alphabetically myself and my friend, Kelly (who also happened to have a big crush on Jon), were the lucky girls who always got to sit next to him. Now Kelly and I were not the cool girls at our school (remember that I was the kid who wore overalls on the first day of gr. 7). If you were concerned about "cementing your legacy of awesomeness," you wouldn’t want to spend a lot of time talking to us.
But Jon was a different kind of cool because, while he always looked great on the outside, he was also a person of character - a genuinely nice guy with a lot of compassion for others. Most of the really popular people at my junior high were popular because they were somehow intimidating to the rest of us, but Jon was popular because he was kind. Everyone liked him because he really seemed to like everybody else. Everybody wanted to be around him because he made sure everybody around him was having fun. His jokes were funny, not just making fun, and to this day I can’t recall him ever saying a mean barb or sarcastic comment to anyone. If you polled the girls at our school I think you would have found that it wasn’t just Kelly and I who had a crush on him.
I never saw Jon after grade 9; we went to different high schools and I’m not sure where he’s at or what he’s up to today. He might have a great job, a big house, a lot of money, or he might not. But one thing is certain: he managed to cement a legacy of awesomeness not because he looked better than everybody else, but because he genuinely cared about everybody else. He didn’t stand out for me at the time because of what he might be some day, or how cool his clothes were or how many parties he got invited to; he stood out simply because he took a stand, for kindness, for compassion, for goodness, for fun, for friendship and, most importantly, for humility – for thinking of others now and again and not only of himself. Not surprisingly, he’s one of the only people whose names I can actually remember from my junior high school – a legacy of awesomeness if there ever was one.
So when you get dressed for that all-important first day back at school, don’t forget that nothing makes you look as good as all the goodness that’s already inside of you. Your character will always be your greatest accessory.
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