“Sometimes I just don’t know,” said my friend. “We tried the best we knew to raise our children well, to love them and provide for them. And now they’re all grown up, and they’re involved with their own families and their own lives, and we feel pretty much left behind.”
We want our children to develop a sense of family with a staunch loyalty, rather than just a so-so commitment.
“I’ve always imagined that would be one of the hardest things about being a grandparent,” I said.
“I know I have to let them go,” she said. “I will not be one of those clinging grandmothers, always trying to make them feel guilty. But at the same time I’d certainly like to have a little recognition of where they came from. Even a thank-you note, when I’ve sent a birthday gift to one of the little ones, would make quite a difference. It really bothers me that they are so ungrateful.”
“I can sympathize with what you’re saying,” I replied, “though I have a hunch that if I started talking about the ingratitude of your children or their families, I would be in serious trouble.”
She laughed. “Yeah, I guess there’s no mama bear like a grandmother bear. I get to complain about them, but everyone else had better not try.”
“It has seemed to me,” I said, “that one of the key problems a parent faces, as kids grow through adolescence and become adults, is that there are two important character traits you want to develop in them, initiative and loyalty, and a lot of the time it seems like the more you work on one, the less emphasis the other one gets.”
Why can’t they learn both?” she asked.
“I think we can teach them both,” I answered, “but it’s not easy, because we don’t want them just to be adequate at these things. We want them to develop a sense of family with a staunch or even a fierce loyalty, rather than just a so-so commitment. And we want them to develop a clear sense of independent initiative so that they can perceive accurately what they need to do and go ahead and do it, rather than always waiting for someone else to tell them what to do.”
“And you’re saying that the better you do as a parent teaching one of these traits, the harder it is to do a good job on the other one?”
“Even when you work really hard at it,” I agreed. “And many people haven’t ever thought about how to balance these two, while others have deliberately chosen one at the expense of the other.”
“Even at their clumsiest, though, I think parents are mostly motivated by the desire to do the best for their children that they can, to give them what they need, as clearly as they understand how.”
“I suppose that’s what we’re all trying to do,” she said. “I guess, in our case, we managed to teach them how to make their own decisions as they live their lives. They’ve established their own families, and they seem to be making it okay, without running home to Mom and Dad for help. But there are times when I wish I’d emphasized the ongoing family interaction a little more.”
And we want them to develop a clear sense of independent initiative, so they can see what they need to do and do it, rather than always waiting for someone else to tell them what to do.
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess most of us want our children to have both: an unquenchable family loyalty, and a confident sense of initiative. But consider this idea: God has the same problem.”
“Really? How?”
“Like you, God loves his children with this irrepressible loyalty – remember how you said you get to criticize them, but nobody else can. And, like you, God wants us to learn both things: to have the courage and wisdom to exercise our own independent initiative, and also to feel the same depth of love and commitment that he has for us. And, like you, he often finds our response quite frustrating.”
“Huh,” she said. “It’s strange to think God would be frustrated by something. Isn’t he supposed to be able to do anything?”
I shrugged. “It seems the Almighty decided not to run the world by domineering over us by almighty cause and effect. God wants us to have the power of independent initiative, rather than be mere puppets. At the same time God wants us to share in a growing sense of connection and family.”
“So God feels the same aggravation with his children that I sometimes do with mine,” she mused.
“And, like you, he’s pretty resolute about finding the way to help us grow to become what we should be. In just the same way that you can see that your children haven’t yet developed both traits as fully as you would like – in the same way that you and I can see that we ourselves haven’t yet got this lesson as well as we would like – so God also thinks there’s no age where you just give up. When we’re 25 or 55 or 85, God keeps offering us chances to express fierce loyalty without becoming servile, and to express independent initiative without becoming distant.”
james-ayers.com 