Twenty six years ago in January, after 36 hours of tough labor and a rather difficult delivery, I gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. As they were wheeling me down the hall to my room, I exclaimed in my drug induced state that I wanted to have four more boys so Tim and I could have our own basketball team. Luckily Jon was not born in October or I would have been calling for 10 more boys to make up one side of a football team!! After I came back down to earth and talked to my doctor, he warned me that having any more kids was not a very good idea for me. I have always felt blessed to have gotten that one child, and a really great one at that! But I always felt a certain sadness that I could not give Jon the other four members of his “team” that I had cried out for that day.
Last Monday night, Christmas Eve, as I watched Jon greeting his friends at church I realized that although I had not given birth to them, God had provided Jon with that team. His group of friends that he has known since around 2nd grade is really hard to explain. I was trying to tell my mom about it and I realized words could not convey what these boys feel for one another.
These boys competed for parts in the church choir productions and for spots in the show choir, but have never really had any big fights. They have been on mission trips together and supported each other through break ups and tough decisions. They have gone off to college, graduated, married and moved, but come Christmas Eve, they fall into the warm embrace that melts any heart that sees them. They always know that if one of them has a major life event, somehow they will make sure they are all there. They have all turned into fine young men, not a one of them straying down a dark path. One is a doctor, two are engineers, one works with kids in a science museum and one is a sportscaster.
I remember being on choir tours with them and being proud of them as teenagers. I have watched three of them walk down the aisle and marry lovely young women. And every year at Christmas I get to see them search for each other and come together in those heartfelt, real life hugs of love and brotherhood. And this year, for the first time, it hit me that God had answered my prayer from 26 years ago, asking for four brothers for my new son. He did it in His way and His time, more perfectly than I could have ever imagined.
Someone pulled my son away from his friends this year and he was very upset about it. I was sympathetic to his complaints, the person who did it had no right to infringe on the few moments Jon gets with his “brothers.” I was telling my hairdresser, Alycia about this event, and trying again to explain how close these boys are. (Let me say that Alycia has done my hair since Jon was in fourth grade and she also cuts Tim and Jon’s hair. She is almost a part of the family. She knows a lot about all of us.) After trying to make her understand about the guys and how upset Jon was I said, “And then she just took him away from his friends.” Alycia never missed a beat before she said, “He LET her take him away.” And in that instant I had to stop and take a breath. I then tried to defend how sweet Jon is and how he was not going to make a fuss. But over the last three days I have thought about what Alycia said. Not just in that instance, but in many more. And not so much about Jon, but about my own behavior.
When I was a child I let everything negative my dad had to say directly effect how I saw myself. It stopped me from doing a lot of things I wanted to do. I LET it stop me. As I got older I listened to what others said way too often and let them limit me. Later I thought I let them do that to me. Now I know I actually did it to myself, they did nothing to me. Even as an adult, I have paid way too much attention to what others think. I know I have said this before, and I have grown a lot over the years. I have come to terms with my father- he is selfish and talks about things he does not really know about. I value some of his opinions, but not all of them like I did as a child. I do work at being polite and considerate, after all, I am not in this world alone and it is not all about me. However, I do let others’ opinions, especially about me, carry more weight than I should. Often I let them carry more weight than my own opinions!
I guess when you see one of the traits you are trying to correct in yourself show up in your child, it really makes you take notice. They always tell you that your kids learn much more from what you do than what you say. I mentioned in my BFA project that I went back into theatre because I saw my son not using the beautiful singing voice God gave him and I realized it was because he saw how horrified I was to have anyone hear me sing. I may not be the best singer in the world, but no one deserves to have their voice be a cause of shame and regret. So I put it out there hoping he would as well. And although he never tried for solos, he did sing in show choir and church choir until he went off to college and now uses his speaking voice to make his living.
But I realize that maybe he lets people push him around as much as I do. I remember when he was in kindergarten. He was always a big guy for his age, off of the charts since birth. I drove up to the school one day to work in the library and there was a kid smashed in a mud puddle on the edge of the playground.. I walked over only to find it was Jon. He was not crying, he was just laying there. I helped him up and asked what in the world was going on. One of his “friends” who was much smaller than Jon had pushed him in the mud and left him there. Jon was so quiet the teacher did not even notice him. I took him inside and cleaned him up and then went to the teacher. I was not angry with her, OK maybe a little bit, I was mad at Jon for letting this little shrimp do that to him and not fighting back. I should have been angry at myself. When I questioned Jon later he said he would have fought back, but since this kid was so small he was afraid to hurt him and just let him get away with it. This same story would repeat itself more than once. (Oh, Jon grew up and if for no other reason than his size and muscles people did not pick on him for long. But he has always been too tenderhearted.)
I thought back to a conversation I had with Tim just a week before Christmas. I was upset at how totally misunderstood I had been recently and how I felt in order to be respectful I had not fought back, at all. Tim told me that maybe I would have actually felt better to have spoken out, even if I had felt like I was throwing other people under the bus in the process. He said if I was being honest and speaking the truth, I had nothing to worry about. I am not so sure about that. But I do know I let what was said and how I was perceived change the way I was thinking about myself. I was letting what others said about me change me in a bad way. And I know what they said was wrong. That they were putting me in the worst possible light instead of seeing my true intentions. And I did not have the gumption to make sure they saw the real me, even if it took all day. Instead I escaped. I thought I escaped to fight another day, but in actuality I had let them strangle any fight I had in me. They probably went on about their day and never gave me another thought, while I let myself crumble inside, a little more each day. I questioned myself at every turn, I got angry, I got sad, I got resentful and I felt worthless.
And then Alycia said, “He LET her…” and I realized I LET THEM do that to me. People I don’t really care about their opinions on the very subjects I was letting their opinions get to me! And then I ran into a little lady at church, someone I had not seen in a while. She came up to me and hugged me. She went on and on about how I am always so put together and so thoughtful to her and everyone. She told me how she had told her husband, who she misses now so terribly, that she thought I put everyone else ahead of myself and how wonderful she thought I was to be there for everyone. She hugged me again with tears in her eyes and left. And I knew that was as far from the truth in the opposite direction as what those other people had said to me, it was just how someone else sees me. And I can not base what I feel about myself on any of those opinions.
I know that I try really hard to be fair and to do what is right. I know I try really hard to stand up for those who aren’t able to stand up for themselves. I know I am a hard worker and that I know how to get things done. I know that I am sensitive not only to what is said to me but what I hear said about others. I know that I try to give people a chance. I try not to judge people at all but certainly not on their race, religion or sexual preference. I try not to be a bother, but to be as self sufficient as possible. I am a work in progress, but I try to do things with the best of intentions. I am a conglomeration of all of my life experiences and I have had a lot.
As a new year starts tomorrow I am really going to try to block out all of the noise pollution that I feel fills my head and I have a bad reaction to the way my son has a bad reaction to cigarette smoke in his lungs. I really don’t do resolutions, I try to get better every day, all year long. But I think I will resolve to take the comments, good and bad, that everyone feels so free to make to me and not give so much weight to them. Even if they come from a parent or a teacher. I think instead of putting them in my brain, I will write them down and then they can be erased, or not, at a later date. Most of all I need to start spending more time listening to God. He has not steered me wrong yet. And He has a way of making things right even when I can’t. After all, he gave me Jon, who has taught me more than I ever taught him, and He gave Jon the brothers I could not give him. He put people like Alycia in my life to call me out when I am ready to blame others for my shortcomings, and He is giving me a new year (I hope!) starting tomorrow! So less of “I LET them” and more of LETTING Him! Less of the flighty opinions of people in worse shape than I am and more the perfect opinion of the One who knows me best. I know I will be tested and I will fail. Hopefully I will be a better example and stand up for myself, mostly for my own self worth, but also for those who are watching.
