Now that we are city living our family has gotten into the habit of taking an evening walk. An effort mainly to exercise the dog and calm the demon child before bedtime. It hasn't proved harmful to our marital relationship either. Time apart. No phones...most of the time. Just conversations, usually about churches, hopes, dreams and the all the boring stuff in between.
Unlike the long hikes on the Evergreen trails, now we see lots of people on our walks. Cars passing by. Young couples holding hands who stop to say how cute Fiona is, always noting how big her blue eyes are. My favorite is when people then follow it up by telling me we look alike. (Gotta take it where you can when your a mom!)
In the comfort of our new family routine it caught us all by surprise to hear a man shouting, literally screaming in his car. He was out of control. The car was abruptly moving forward and slamming on its breaks. I guess I thought maybe it was a marital argument that had gone too far. I've actually seen that before, more than once. But as the SUV pulled past us we saw that only a young boy sat in the car. A boy maybe somewhere between 7 and 10 yelling back in a shaky voice "You don't care about anything...all you do is yell" while the man continued to scream "That is why I am mad!" over and over again. And then they were gone.
I have always had a soft spot for children and animals, ever since I was a kid. It has always been very upsetting to see either a child or an animal treated badly but ever since I became a mom my kid protection/sympathies have gone off the charts. I can't watch television shows where children are victims of crimes, movies about children in bad situations are out of the question, and stories about children who are in abusive situations will ruminate in my mind for months.
It is no doubt that witnessing the snapshot of the life of this young boy will be no different...that it will be something I think about for a long time. Wondering if he is okay, if there is anyone to love and support and protect him from the rage of his father. If he will be broken down by fear and criticism or if by some miraculous event he will be able to rise above and believe in himself, love himself, find a worth in himself; things the actions and words of his father never showed him.
Perhaps becoming a mother has taken away any tolerance for child abuse and mistreatment because being a mother has shown me how truly vulnerable our children are; how absolutely dependent they are on us for their care. It is the dependency and vulnerability of our children that give us as parents an ultimate power and dangerous potential to harm our children if our hearts and minds are not in healthy places.
Christian parents face what seems to be a variety of decisions today when we attempt to allow our faith to guide our parenting style. There is the ever too popular models of fear and intimidation, corporeal punishment and cruelty for the purposes of controlling our child's will or quite ironically I suppose "saving their souls(?). Most of us are already aware of the groups to which I am referring to...but it seems that there should be a way (and there is) to let an image of a loving and grace-filled God to show us how to parent our children. A God who invites us back no matter how many times we walk away, a God who expects nothing in return for Her gift of limitless love.
John calls me a hippie parent. He says that as a high strung controlling person my parenting style has surprised him. Okay I added the descriptors but that is why he is surprised. But if I have to explain where my parenting style comes from and why I parent the way I do it is directly related to the role God plays in my life. A God who creates possibilities out of my messes, whose presence comforts me when I conflicted, and who never fails to offer forgiveness regardless of those incredibly stupid things I do knowingly or unknowingly. My God allows me to learn hard lessons by sprinkling (sometimes outright dumping) grace on my path and sending gentle winds (or tornadoes) of change to guide me in new directions. Just as God desires for me to become the best person I can be in relationship to myself and others in this world, so too will I try to empower Fiona to see in herself what God sees in all of us-unlimited possibility for joyful creation.
I also believe that the Bible and the experiences of our lives lives teach us that our God is a God of redemption and reconciliation, which is priceless in parenting. We will all give our children something to talk about in therapy. Some unhealthy habit(s) to carry into their own parenting style. But no matter how far we've gone or how ugly and selfish we have been it will never be too late to tell our children we are sorry, we were wrong. That we are proud of them for who they are and will and have become not because of what they have accomplished or how closely they have come to meeting our subjective expectations but because they are beautiful creations of God, pure and simple.
Reconciliation may not take the happily ever after ending of our imaginations, but more the mysterious and imperfect path that God has quilted together for us to walk toward a more loving relationship. In Christian parenting, our request for forgiveness and our willingness to change our behaviors is the first step towards the mountain which is reconciliation in broken relationships with our children.
I hope that reconciliation will someday be possible for this boy and his father because in spite of all the other supportive and loving people that boy has in his life, he only has one dad, and what his dad says and how he treats him will affect the way he sees himself and treats others for the rest of his life. Parenting is serious business. But it is also a journey. We learn as we go. I have to believe that no parent intends to hurt their child or break their Spirit. Perhaps it is what they learned through religion, or how they were raised as children, or the symptoms of an addiction or mental illness, but my theology undoubtedly leads me to hold True that it is wrong to rule your home with fear and intimidation.
As I write this Fiona sits on her dads lap. They are watching "The Littles," an incredibly annoying cartoon that John used to watch as a child. He will read her nighttime stories, turn on her music and kiss her goodnight. He will stay home with her tomorrow because she has been feeling under the weather. He will be her protector, her provider, and later in life, her friend. She will never fear the threat of his hand or the harm of his words. I hope that this boy knows that this is what he deserves, a father who through his relationship to his children desires to draw closer to the image of a God of unconditional love and eternal grace.
Perhaps if we choose to integrate anything from our Christian faith into our parenting it should be to seek to deserve a love that is so freely given as that of our children's, just as our faith moves us to do for our Creator. That to save the souls of our children we are called into a partnership with God to help them up on those Eagle's wings and watch God lift them up above those forces which dilute the power and possibility of the person whom they were created to be.
