As a mother, there are two gifts you wish to bestow upon
your children: to live fearlessly and to love with hearts wide open. But saying this you know that life will crush
them at times, many times possibly, as it already has. But if you can teach them only two things,
that the only way to truly live is to not let the fear of the crushing stop
them from living. And to not let the
pain of loving and losing stop them from opening their hearts.
As their mother you instinctively want to protect. But life has bluntly and repeatedly taught
you that you can’t protect them from everything, or really from anything, and
that trying to shield them from pain and heartache only keeps them from truly
living in the end. Rather you strive to
teach them to push through the pain and suffering that comes, and that is sure
to come again, and to show through the light of living what they can become in
spite of the obstacles.
So, you plan big trips that scare you which include hikes
that take you high places, even though you are yourself tremendously afraid of
heights. You plan these adventures knowing full well that there will be parts
that are scary for you, but you don’t want to hold your children back because
of your own fears. And at one point during
a hike when your fear response takes over your body, you ask your daughter to
take your small son’s hand and lead him to safety. And your teenage son takes your hand until
you find your steadiness again and your breath has returned to normal. And you
feel proud that they were not afraid.
And you rejoice in their loving, even when it scares you,
and you encourage them to open their hearts even knowing how hard those hearts
can break. With Father’s Day approaching again, you wonder what you can do to
distract them. But instead of planning
something to get them off the radar this year, you just let it come. And your daughter spends her morning taking
care of homeless kittens and delivering a note to a friend in need. And your teenage son makes lunch with his girlfriend
and you can’t help but notice how joyful they are, even today. And you hear him ask her casually what her
dad was doing to celebrate Father’s Day, as if it were no big deal, and because
he genuinely cares.
And you suddenly realize that sometimes, a lot of the time,
it is so much less of teaching them something and more of just letting things
be. You realize that they were born
fearless. And that simply allowing that
to be so is all they need. And you see
that they are loving with abandon as children do so naturally and are so
grateful that they still can. You realize that just because you are afraid of
heights doesn’t mean that they need to be.
And that just because you are afraid of Father’s Day doesn’t mean that
they are.
