Bread and Jam
by Gail
Here I sit eating bread and strawberry jam at a totally unreasonable hour of the night. Mmmm…Bread and jam. If I had a cup of tea with cream and sugar, I would be so happy. Instead, I drink my Aquafina. My keyboard is getting rather sticky.
I am in training. I must stay up as late as I possibly can because I cannot fall asleep tomorrow night. I know that many of you will bristle when I tell you this, but tell you I must. Tomorrow night is our congregation’s youth group lock-in. Yes, there will be boys and there will be girls and they will be spending the night under one roof. I know, I know… Oh, please, let’s not even go there. I have a child, though, who wants to stay up all night long with her friends. And since my house cannot accommodate such an event, I will be spending the night with my daughter at our church building. My daughter is not interested in boys in any way except as potential friends. She abhors the implication of anything else. I don’t know what the other girls or boys are interested in, but I am going to be there to protect my daughter’s interests. I am also bringing along her ten-year-old sister since my husband has to be at work very early the next morning. If my husband didn’t have to work, most likely we would be there as a family.
I remember clearly what it was like to be a thirteen-year-old. My parents were very different parents than Will and I are. I know we grew up in a slightly different world than our children are growing up in, but it wasn’t that different. What were my parents thinking? I don’t think they were thinking the world had changed very much since they were growing up, perhaps. I don’t know. I look back, though, and I see parents who were too tired for the challenge. They were seduced into abdicating their authority over their children by sending us to both public and parochial schools. I believe that.
I think that parenting can be a very tiresome business. It requires you to be constant at all times. We are encouraged to let go of our children and scowled upon when we seem to pull them close. I don’t believe it is our children that we are really being asked to let go of. It is our authority over them. We are told that we should gradually let them go so that they can be independent young men and women. Someone once said that during a ladies’ bible class and it struck me as wrong. My girls were only toddlers, at the time. I looked up and said, “I don’t think God expects me to bring my children up to be independent. I think that God expects me to help them to transfer their dependence on me to a total dependence on him.” I truly think that God put those words into my mouth that night because I am just not that wise. They are words that I have kept close to my heart all these years. So, I will not let go of my authority over my children. I will not relax. I love my children and I love my God. It is foolish to think that raising children should be easy. But I can tell you that it can be joyful.
Ah, bread and jam.
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Comments
That is an awesome statement! I love what you said in your bible class!!!
I hope you don’t mind if I adopt it!
My daughter (*Head Girl) and I were just talking about this last night. She wondered what our parents were thinking to let my generation loose as they did, knowing, as they must have known, what kind of feelings and emotions and temptations can get stirred up. I told her I didn’t think they didn’t believe those things could happen, but they did believe there wasn’t anything at all they could do about- they had to stand back and just hope and pray that we wouldn’t make ourselves sick being left unsupervised in a candy shop. Very sad.
I love that thought about dependence–thank you!
I agree with you wholeheartedly on your thoughts on parental authority, I think, in regards to independence, there is a fine line you must walk between practicality and smothering. (And, I am in no way inferring that you smother.)
Here, in China, they have crossed the threshold into smothering, to the point where the whole culture has lost its independence, and it is not as nice a thing as you would think.
Ask any of my university students what the difference between Chinese youth and Western youth, and they will say ?They live so independently.?
Sometimes, I feel as if I have lived the life of 10 men compared to what many of these people have.
My ?Little Sister? here seems to be amazed that I can?
Fix a car.
Fix a bicycle.
Climb a tree.
Plant a garden.
Work on computers.
Mow a lawn.
Drive a car.
Invest money.
Weld.
Cook.
I often hear her say, ?How could you have done so many things when you were young??
The answer is, and will always be, ?Because I HAD to do those things.?
Here, they have one child, and that is their world, their hopes for tomorrow. They are spoiled beyond belief, but not in the way you think. They neglect the simple things in life and throw education at them, full force. You end up with farming families whose children can?t even till topsoil.
Where, if I had a car or bike that needed to be fixed, it was the fact that our parents HAD 4 children and didn?t have the time for all of us, which allowed for the atmosphere for me to learn those skills. I will be the first to agree that Mom and Pop did MANY things wrong, but after what I have seen here, I am glad they kicked us out of the house to play on our own, as often as they did. I mean, can you imagine, trying to teach the vast amount of practical knowledge you have, to every one of your children? Nobody taught me how to replace a water pump on a Buick, and I would hate to give that lesson to 4 kids.
Seriously, just yesterday, I climbed a tree to help some elderly people gather Ginkgo fruit. She said, ?Ge (older brother)? You even know how to climb a tree?? It really makes me feel sad for her (She?s 24).