Faith in Our Children

September 25, 2020 - edited Sept 2, 2023

I was on a plane several years ago and sat next to a delightful woman who quickly became a friend for that flight. She talked about her three daughters and each sounded like a stellar human being - each with unique talents that she was pursuing. One daughter was doing research at Harvard, one was studying at Emory University and the third was a talented senior in high school. She described each daughter in such a way that I had to ask how she had parented her children for each to become what I would call “flourishing”. Not so much because of the education each had or was receiving but because she described them as each being kind, hard-working, and genuinely good people. At the time, my two boys were young and flourishing young adults and how they managed to get that way fascinated me. This new friend of mine also talked about the struggles with the girls - mostly anxiety and dealing with self-imposed pressure to succeed. She let me know it wasn’t always a picnic at her home but that the girls actually really liked each other and rarely fought. Again, I was amazed and wanted to know her secrets. She told me the only real parenting “skill” she had was having faith in who her children were as people. She emphasized that she didn’t mean faith in a religious way, but faith more in a complete trust way. I immediately felt that warm tingle of shame flowing through my body. I wasn’t sure I could say the same about my own parenting. I worried about my boys and how to make sure they would grow up happy, healthy, kind, and contributing adults. I gotta say, listening to this woman talk so graciously about her children and feeling my own lacking there was some hard truth to swallow. 

I came home from that flight with a deep desire to trust. Trust in what I call God. Trust in my own instincts as a mother. Mostly, to trust and have faith in whom my children are as people. Trust is my Achilles heel. It is a continued journey that often feels like a rollercoaster ride or maybe being slung around in a huge dryer. Sometimes I feel as if I am in the center - grounded and clear - and then in a hot second I can be slung to the outer rim. When I fall back into worry (or anger, fear, blame) with regard to parenting my boys, I remind myself that they were gifts that came through me to the world and it is my job to have faith in who they are at their core. My job is to love. Thankfully, I can screw things up again and again, and still have faith in who my children are as people. This is not about anything close to perfection - quite the opposite in fact. This is about compassion, embracing the messiness, and having the courage to keep at it. Always, it comes back to trust. 

May we have faith in who our children are as people.