"ON CHILDREN"

“ON CHILDREN”

            Our son David will turn 40 this week – wow, that is hard to believe! I remember the night that he was born in Norfolk, Virginia.  It was snowing as I drove Caroline to St. Vincent DePaul Hospital there – they were the only hospital in the area in 1980 that allowed Lamaze births and allowed the spouses to be in the birthing room.  It snowed 6 inches overnight, and over the next 6 weeks, it snowed 40 inches in Norfolk – nothing moved for days!  David rolled on down the birth canal, and it looked like a relatively easy birth, but he got stuck at 8 centimeters – his head was so big!  It has served him well eve since! Finally, 12 hours later he emerged at 9 AM, snorting as he came.  I got to cut the umbilical cord, but there was some concern that his breathing was not normal, so I carried him to the neo-natal ICU for observation.   It turned out that his breathing was fine.

            Caroline and I were conflicted on children – she wanted them, but I did not.  Abandonment by my father had made me leery about having children.  I did not know how to raise children, and I was afraid of developing such an intimate relationship.  My childhood had been so painful, seeking and longing for a dad who would never choose to show up.  Caroline obviously prevailed, but we chose not to do any internal prenatal testing to tell us the gender of the fetus and if there were any abnormalities.  Caroline was 32 and had already had a miscarriage, and I was 33, and in 1980, that was seen as “old” to be having a first child.  We chose not to know anything about the fetus – we would just take what we got.  And, we got him, with all his fingers and toes.

            David (and Susan) have been great gifts to us.  Since David was a boy, I got to work out some of the fathering, that I never received as a boy, in my relationship to him.  In a weird way, I received the gift of fathering from my engagement with David (and Susan).  In fathering them, I received fathering.  I discovered depths of emotion and soul work in myself that I had long since repressed, that I thought that I never had.  They have been wonderful gifts to us, and we even made it through adolescence with very few problems.  I’d like to think that it was our great parenting that made this possible, but I’ve been a minister long enough to have seen plenty of good parents go through hell with their children.  We did do sincere and diligent work as parents, but I also know that we have been greatly blessed, with no trivializing of that word intended.   Through their work and our work and God’s grace, they have turned out to be fine adults.

            Our ministry at Oakhurst taught us that it truly takes a village to raise children, and we are grateful to those teachers, youth group leaders, carpool drivers, child care givers (Melody, Stephanie, Kentria, Samantha, Jon, Dacia and others) who stepped into the breech for us.  It is a reminder that our children are not our children.  I first heard this line in a Sweet Honey in the Rock song, and I later learned that it was from a poem by Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran entitled “On Children.”  Here is some of that poem:

“Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but are not from you,

And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,

Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them,

But you cannot make them just like you.”

So, thanks, David, for these 40 years!  We’d love to see the next 40, but we know that you (and now Emma and Zoe) dwell in the house of tomorrow, and we will have to  turn you loose to it.  Thank you so much for deepening and tending my soul.