Things I Learned Along the Way
Looking back now, I recognize that parents learn to be parents right along with raising our children, sometimes experiencing great success and other times failing miserably! There were not as many helpful books on child rearing or advice columnists or church curricula as there are now so my husband and I read the Word, Dr. Dobson’s writings and tried our best to raise our sons. And isn’t it odd that children don’t come with instruction manuals?
I was completely unaware when my sons were born that I subconsciously set up an agenda for each of them. This agenda included expectations of how they should behave, what kind of grades they would make, how they would act when they hit the teens years and what their future would be. The Scripture in Proverbs that says, “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it” at first blush meant that I had to decide the direction for my children, without fully considering their individual strengths, weaknesses, gifts, and talents. Later on, I read this verse takes into consideration those facets of an individual along with proper moral instruction and Godly direction.
When our oldest son was a little tyke, he reminded me of a sweet, wise little man. He was always happy and content in whatever and wherever he found himself. He loved everyone and made friends from all generations of people. From the time he was just a baby, he could imitate the tones of car and truck horns that passed us on the highway with perfect pitch. Nursery songs and later more complex songs came easily to him. Music surrounded him and fed his love of music and movement. One of my favorite memories is that of seeing him in his red Superman cape and his cowboy boots dancing his own choreographed version of an Ella Fitzgerald tune as it spun on his record player.
Around the age of 2, he learned his alphabet and one night when he and I were having our goodnight time, he began to ask me to name the colors of all the objects in his room. He learned them all that night and even the names of various shades of color. My husband and I recall the time we were driving down the highway and a Piggly Wiggly truck passed. Suddenly we heard our little guy say, “Look a Pig Willigy truck!” He recognized the words on the side of the truck.
Stories, both oral and televised drew him like a magnet. One of his favorite television programs was Little House on the Prairie. One day he hopped in his little pedal truck and told us that he was going to California to pick Laura up so they could get married! What an imagination! He would entertain us with stories of Georgia and Lester, two imaginary playmates that lived in his sandbox. We were always charmed with his quite grownup expressions and his command of vocabulary.
Very early he developed a love for performance and as a preschooler would participate in youth musicals his dad directed. Since he accompanied us to all rehearsals, he often knew the music as well or better than we did! He performed in plays in both elementary and high school, and sang in auditioned groups and choirs throughout his school and church life. Now, tell me why we, his parents, were so surprised when he changed his major in college to Musical Theater instead of the ministry! See, there’s that agenda thing again.
I was completely astonished when my oldest son blew that agenda to bits! Suddenly, he was away from home, free to do as he pleased and I had entirely no say in the matter. I can recall a statement he made to me during one of my “talks” to him. “What are you going to do, Mother, ground me over the phone?!” I don’t recall having much of a come back. My husband and I suffered the painful tearing away of our own flesh or so it seemed as my son struggled to become his own person, make his own decisions, and go into life with his own agenda. I often wonder if we had not been so intent on molding our child into who we thought he should be that the struggle would have been easier and the cost to our collective relationship not quite so high.
You see, we thought him a perfect child and he strove to live up to our idea of him. But, he had other ideas and dreams that had to be considered and dreamt. He entered college at age 17 and as Bill Cosby once said about children…some demon came and took away his child and replaced him with another child and that’s what we thought had happened to our first born.
As it were, our relationship with our son became very strained and tense. He, in his struggle to become his own man, distanced himself from us and we, in our perplexed and concerned state, probably did little to convince him that even as he followed his interests and made his mistakes we loved him unconditionally. With time and maturity (ours), we came to realize that the best thing a parent can do is to allow their children to truly leave the nest and fly into the world all the while leaving the porch light on, the welcome mat out and the door to home wide open.
God in His faithfulness brought our son back fully restored into our lives and to his spiritual roots. It took time - time for him to grow, suffer, learn, and mature; time for us to grow, suffer, learn and mature! When we began to be more like the Father we found that we no longer looked at his journey in the same way. We had faith that the Father who loves us, loved him more than we, so we simply loved him - no matter what. And we began to lift our eyes to the road looking for his return. Not only that, but we went to where he was even though to us the places were unfamiliar and maybe a little uncomfortable. It was Christ’s agape love through us that drew him back to the way and back to us.