Giving our children freedom is a day-to-day, month-to-month, year-to-year process. We gaze at each child, in all his or her beautiful singularity, strength and frailty. We gaze at their ages, their levels of maturity, even our realization of how their brains have developed at that particular stage. We talk situations over with our spouse, a trusted other, a wise elder. We seek the advice of experts. We seek to understand our own hearts and motives.
We pray - a lot. We know that God has entrusted these particular lives to us and sometimes we feel as if we can't possibly handle this mission correctly. We all carry baggage from our own childhoods, from parents, siblings, and/or life experiences. Can we surmount the real obstacle of our wounded, sinful self?
And then we decide, often with something that's like a gut instinct, how much to allow them to do, how far to allow them to go. We give them freedom. We know that they have to stand or fall on their own. And, the older they grow, the more times we see that in their freedom they make mistakes, sometimes start hurtful relationships, pick up bad habits, make sinful choices, cry in their rooms at night or in our arms. And, our hearts broken, we cry in our rooms at night or in our spouse's arms.
At some point they leave our houses, our protection, our house rules - to live totally on their own. It is their choice whether or not to keep or sever their relationships with us, to continue living with the faith and the values we gave them or to choose a way of thinking and/or a lifestyle diametrically opposed to what they learned from us. It's a truly terrifying time. And yet we know we have to let them go, give them their freedom.
Because we know that Love is free. We know that a child who stays a child, manipulated and dominated by a parent, can never choose freely, live freely, love freely, BE freely. Above all we yearn for them to become all of whom they can become, not people so stuck in mindless obedience and so tied to us that they never even begin to glimpse all the unique talents they have, all the good that they are capable of giving to the world. We know that we all grow precisely through the choices we freely make.
Sometimes the choices we make are affected by fear, passion, unhealthy habits. We make them, and they change us, sometimes for the good, sometimes for evil. But if we allow our choices and their consequences to teach us, we learn and we grow and we can become more humble, loving, giving. That is the meaning of Life itself.
If we believe in a God, a personal God, our own parenthood can teach us more about our loving Parent. In the same way we realize that we have to give our children freedom, we can realize at a deeper and deeper level why God creates us to be free and have free will. God does not want to dominate us, control us, manipulate us, because then we could not choose freely to love God or anyone else! God knows that we will grow and become the unique individuals we can become only through the free choices that we make.
We look at our world, see the sin, the violence, the hatred, the pain, and ask "Why, God?" If we deeply believe God is our Parent, then we believe God is allowing millions of His children to make free choices, for good or for ill - so that they can learn to freely love and become uniquely themselves. We trust that the world is God's own, that Love is more powerful than any evil, even Death.
God is always as accessible to His children as we are to ours, even when our children have taken a wrong road - but infinitely more so - because God is the perfect Parent - no baggage, no mistakes, simply the Essence of Merciful Love.
Unlike us, who rely on phone calls, skyping, texting, and Facebook, to communicate with our children, God dwells within each of His children's hearts. Living right there with us, God is always ready for instant conversation, instant guidance better than a GPS, instant consolation better than any drug or any other high - if we freely choose to welcome His Presence.
If we truly meditate on how God parents us, gently, patiently, gradually leading us, allowing us to learn from our mistakes and sins, somehow allowing even the worst things that happen to us to contribute to our growth, forgiving us over and over- we can learn how to become better parents, day by day. God, our perfect Parent, will always work through us and around us, loving our beloved children infinitely more than we do. We can trustfully leave ourselves and them in His loving Hands.
Every time we open the front door and welcome our children home, we can remember that Death is simply an open door, and our most loving and merciful Parent waits on the other side to embrace us and welcome us to our real, eternal Home.
"Jesus said, 'This is how you are to pray: Our Father...'" (Matthew 6:9)
If you like my posts, please share them with a friend and help me spread the Good News of God's love!