As a part of our celebration today of Christian Family and Mothers Day this is a report on a mother’s life as described by the words she says to her child.
“Did you brush your teeth?” “What are you doing out of bed?” “Go back to bed.” “You can’t watch in the afternoon.” “What do you mean there’s nothing to do? Go outside, read a book, turn it down.” “Get off the phone.” “Tell your friend you’ll call her back.” “Right now!” “Hello, no, she’s not home.” “She’s still not home.” “She’ll call you when she gets home.” “Take a jacket.” “Take a sweater.” “Take one anyway.” “Someone left his shoes in front of the TV.” “Get the toys out of the hall.” “Get the toys off the stairs.” “Do you realize you could kill someone?” “Hurry up, hurry up, everyone’s waiting.” “I’ll count to ten and then we’re going without you.” “Did you go to the bathroom?” “If you don’t go you’re not going!” “I mean it!” “Why didn’t you go before you left?” “What’s going on back there?” “Stop it!” “I said stop it!!” “I don’t want to hear about it.” “Stop it or I’m taking you home right now!” “That’s it, we’re going home!” “Give me a kiss.” “I need a hug.” [1]
Irma Bombeck among other words of advice for parents said, “Don’t turn your back on your two-year-old.”
After several decades of being within a family of my own and the one I grew up in, I have two observations. One is that every family is different from every other, and what is useful and workable in one family may not help another at all. The second conclusion is that our relationships change all the time. Just when we think we have something settled some newness comes along and we must change.
Every relationship must chart it’s course through vast and subtle changes that occur over time and most of us find it very difficult to accept change. Most of the time I think most people respond to change by saying, “I like it the old way.”
A number of years ago in another community I was visiting a church of another denomination on my vacation. I arrived a little early because I needed to find where to park and how to get into the church; there was a different order of service and I wanted to understand it before worship began. I sat down in a seat about two thirds of the way back (in good Methodist tradition) and was reading the bulletin when suddenly I felt a shadow hovering over me. I looked up and there was a rather elderly woman who did not say, “we’re glad you’re here, is this your first time to worship with us?” Her words were, “You’re sitting in my seat.” That church may not be accustomed to much change and they probably find it difficult to accept new people into their fellowship.
A reporter went out to interview a farmer about the many revolutions and evolutions in farm practice over the years. As he finished and taken notes he said, “I imagine you’ve seen a lot of changes in your life, haven’t you?” The farmer said, “Yes, and I’ve been against every dang one of them, too.”
Yet relationships change. They change because individuals change; we’re different people at fifty than we were at fifteen. You may say, “Thank God!”
The circumstances of life change. It was one thing for me to grow up in a town of thirty-five hundred people. It was another for our kids to grow up in a suburb of metropolitan Los Angeles. It’s one thing to grow up before internet. It’s another thing to grow up with all of the world at your fingertips, both good and bad.
Relationships change because they keep multiplying. Before we had four children when I saw a family with several children it seemed somewhat inappropriate. Now, four is just the normal number. But, the problem is you don’t just have four children, you have spouses and significant others and their’ friends and grandchildren and the relationships multiply.
One attitude, which helps in a sea of change, is the attitude of commitment. Lewis Smedes once wrote that, “commitment gives relationships a longer lease on life.”
I remember the last months of the life of the husband of the woman who became another mother to me after my mother died. Florence and Jim French became the parental figures in my life. Jim contracted cancer and lived a number of months in very difficult circumstance. Florence took care of him’ at home. She set up a bed in the family room. It was before the days of Hospice and the wonderful care that they help a family to give to a dying person. I visited them and watched as she, week after week, day after day, was there, taking care of him.
It was a sign of a commitment of their lives to each other long after she had stood with him in the church and said, “I will be there with you.” Even though the magic was gone. There was no song, music, left in his life anymore. She still believed he was there and she could care for him. [2]
That is what commitment is all about. That’s the basic attitude that will see us through the sea changes of our relationships.
Our commitment must be to the real person and not the one you wish for.
One man had about given up hope of ever understanding what he called his adolescent tempest, Cathy. He asked his psychologist friend how a mixed up father could get some insight into the turbulent mind of a teenager he loved. The psychologist said to him, “There are three critical facts you need to remember as the father of a rambunctious rebel…one, she is not human; two, survival is the best you can hope for; three, things are going to change.”
Now, he had expected a little more academic advice. In a sense, when you first hear those words they are rather hard and jarring. But, as Lewis Smedes thought about them the more he realized that the issue was with him and his understanding, and it helped him a great deal. His friend was describing Smedes own unrealistic expectations.
First of all, the statement about his daughter not being human sounds like a put down and insulting. But Smedes said it really had to do with his crazy notion about what his daughter should have been. He expected her to be a mature, rational, sensitive human being. But she could not be human in that way. Not then, not yet. She could be, and was, a passionate person with a wild wave of anger at life’s injustice. But she was not yet reasonable and Smedes was unrealistic to think that she should be.
About survival he said, “I was having pipe dreams about enjoying a star for a daughter. Well, at least a small asteroid who’d be up there on the stage of life smiling down at me as she received the prizes and accolades from society. That was not who she was, or would be.” He was happy to think that things would, he was glad for that but he wasn’t sure which things would change. He’d have to wait and see.
That advice allowed him to keep his hopes within the limits of reality. Then he writes these very important words. “Hope is not a guarantee of complete satisfaction, it’s a kind of power, an inner power, to believe that life can get better. Not perfect, but better than it used to be. Good enough to make it worth the struggle to keep our commitment about someone whom we care.” [3] Commitment to the real person and not the one you wish for.
Then our commitment must be to the future, not the past. It’s sad to spend too much energy regretting what has happened, or what can never be again. Two things we know about the future…it will be different, and it will come.
One important dynamic that will see you through the changes is a commitment to the God who meets us in the future. God is a God of change. “I am doing a new thing,” a new thing to you, but with you and through you. Without God, change will chew you up and spit you out. But with God, change will lead to blessing and renewal. God, the source of forgiveness, the ground of hope, the power of divine creative love is vital to the equation of any growing relationship… of parent and child, husband and wife, friend to friend.
God in your family is not acknowledged and welcomed without the decision, time and effort by the adults in the family. When prayer and Sunday School becomes as important as soccer and grades, God has a chance of influencing the future. For example, in the quiet time before bed, read to your children from a book of prayers. When trouble comes, God will have been experienced as daily companion.
Change can’t destroy us. It can bring us pain to make us miserable, but it can’t tear us apart if we hold on to commitment and if we rest on the strength of God which is beyond our own.
A couple of weeks ago we had a wonderful Duke Ellington concert here in our sanctuary of some of Ellington’s sacred music. Some years ago Ellington was being interviewed on Mike Douglas’ show. As they talked Douglas asked Duke Ellington to share some of the experience of his early life, some of the heartache and trouble that he went through to achieve the kind of success and recognition that he had. Ellington said he didn’t have any of that. Douglas was astounded that he didn’t have stories of being hungry and suffering. Ellington said, “I started out doing exactly what I wanted to do, writing music. I had faith in myself and it was easy.” Then he added, “When I was a little boy I was loved so much and held so much that I don’t think my feet touched the ground until I was seven years old.” Is it possible there’s a connection there, that to have that confidence in yourself, an assurance that you do well is related to being held and loved when you’re a child? [4]
We have many wonderful relationships in the family, in our community, in our church. Basic to creative, hopeful relationships is a hug and our heart. Beyond all good advice, beyond all the money we could give our children, more important than anything else is that we have time, a caring heart, arms which are big enough to hug and a spirit to love others just as they are. Amen.
[1] By Delia Ephron
[2] Lewis Smedes, “Caring and Commitment”
[3] Lewis Smedes
[4] Thanks to Mark Trotter