The key to child-rearing: Trusting the love.
On all levels of our culture – as a community and as a nation – we have a lot at stake with our children. With this in mind, their education ought to be among our highest priorities as a nation. They are the bearers of our traditions, our way of life; they are the channels through whom our common futures will be shaped and defined.
With our children, on a personal level, there are no words to express the depths and reaches of our emotions and feelings. They have come from us. The imprint of all that we are is in them and being passed on through them. And yet, there's more.
Our children are more than all of this; more than all our passionate love for them, more than our lofty hopes for their future. In every one of our children, there is a mystery that transcends us.
There is a mystery of life that is birthed in them from the beginning of creation. If we are paying attention and are discerning, it is a mystery that humbles us. And part of what this means, as people of faith and people of the spirit, is that in the grand scheme of our lives, our children do not belong to us; they belong to God. We may sense this on some level; but, still, it doesn't always wear well with us.
The Lebanese-born poet and philosopher, Khalil Gibran, reminds us:
"Your children are not your children. They come through you but not from you. And though they are with you, they belong not to you. You may house their bodies, but not their souls. For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow."
Letting go. There's a part of us parents that always wants to hold our children tight, to protect them in every conceivable way – to never let them go. Letting our children go, of course, is never easy, no matter how many birthdays they've had. Whether we're dropping them off at pre-school, first grade, high school, or college, it's tough.
Letting them go hurts. It makes us anxious and troubles our long nights with worry and fear. And yet, it is one of the most important things we can do as loving parents. I read somewhere that babies should come into our lives with a sign on them that reads: Love at your own risk. And so it is.
One of the keys to parenting, therefore, is to find a balance between the deep love of our children that wants to take care of their every need … and the quiet trust that's willing to let them go in the faith and hope that, in God's care, they will find their way. Trusting the love.
This sort of trust doesn't always come easily – trust on the shoulders of love. But it is a critical element; trust and love go together. From birth on, we love our children with all we have and then, simply put, we trust the love.
To all parents, it is important to say: Believe in yourselves; trust your best instincts. And remember: when we love children with big love, and then trust the love, they won't want to disappoint us. They won't want to let us down; and they will want to do everything they can to make us proud of them.
In the big picture of our lives, what this means is – not only we can trust the love, but we can also trust the mystery of life. While we can never fully understand the mystery, we can trust it.
We can also grow to trust it in ourselves and in our children. When we progress to where we can embrace life with this depth of trust, our lives are suddenly more stress free. Why? Because we are not forever trying to control every last detail of our lives.
Trying to control everything is hard work; it's a lose-lose situation doomed to failure. But then when we wake up one day and choose to give ourselves to the spirit in trust, good things begin to happen. A mature trust takes us to a new level of living to where we grow to trust ourselves and our children. And suddenly an enormous burden is taken from our shoulders.
(Contact Dr. Frantz on the web at www.mlcchurch.com.)