Like most parents, I've wondered why there is no “manual” for such a challenging responsibility. With daughters currently age 20, 18, 12 and 11 – it has slowly dawned on me: every kernel of truth we receive forms all the manual we ever need. If we pay attention to our inner development, our actions will flow from our character. Every improvement within naturally, effortlessly shows itself in our interactions.
When the choice to do what is good requires a lot of effort – it points to where I need to grow.
After several years working with teens in a youth group, I could hear themes in how they saw their parents. I prayed I would remember what their perspectives taught me in the future when my daughters became teenagers. The core realization was that our children are individuals deserving dignity. They long to be heard, understood and loved. They need room to fall while they learn. Parental love must be unconditional.
My focus was to grow in unconditional love. I know I had some success – I felt it within, and my daughters responded to it. I felt our family was perfectly imperfect.
When my oldest daughter was 13, illusions I didn't know I had were shattered.
My perception of my life was guided by my attempts to be a positive realist. I had faced difficult challenges – some invited, some not. Yet, I welcomed them. I felt I had woken up from slumber, and had grown in the process. That was true. A fearlessness had begun to take root. When you face pain without shrinking, you find out that instead of destroying you, it can release you. That sense of freedom was vivid in me.
The illusions were buried deeper than I had gone. Perhaps they were hidden by the daily responsibilities of my life. Four daughters. Homeschooling of the oldest two for two years. Starting a business. Running a chaotic household with humor and honesty. It all felt good. I realize I was fiercely guarding those illusions.
Still, a restlessness was churning in me. Though it was formless, after a while I could no longer deny feeling it.
The day I write about now, I felt that restless shadow darkening. I was agitated, with plaguing feelings of dread. I sensed imminent doom. I felt fragile – fearful. The anxiety was both foreign and familiar.
Sometime after 5 pm on that late August day, my neighbor knocked on my door. Already things were turning odd. After five years living next door, we had spoken less than half a dozen times. She had come over to bring me a letter that had been correctly addressed, but mistakenly delivered to her. To this day, I have to smile at the wisdom of “fate” in the timing of my receiving that letter. The day would have passed much differently had it not been for that act of grace. With too much time to think, I would have hardened.
Instead, here I was with only a few minutes before I had to leave to pick up my oldest daughter after track practice. I read that shattering letter. It had been sent “anonymously”, though I knew who had mailed it. The handwritten note accompanied about ten photocopies:
“Thought that you should see the letters [your daughter] is sending [our son]. This is a sampling. Clearly they shouldn't be allowed to see each other.”
The photocopies were of my daughter's letters to her boyfriend. The letter had obviously come from his father and stepmother. He was in residence at a facility for troubled youth, where his parents had sent him when they had had enough of trying to deal with him.
I had enabled his relationship with my daughter, including a trip to visit him, out of “Christian love.” I had wanted, by example, to show her the loving humility of Jesus – accepting and embracing others even when they were troubled. I had welcomed him into my home. I had offered him compassion in long talks when he shared some of his childhood traumas, and gave him emotional support. I felt they had both betrayed all of that. My sweetly compliant, innocent child had “made a fool of me.”
So many facades crumbled, I could not name them all. The “golden light” of my home was revealed to be utterly false. Darkness cascaded through me. My primary thoughts were, “How dare she do this to our family?” and “Just wait until I get hold of her!” My sense of loss was profound. So much for the formula that told me if I just tried hard enough, if I did everything “right”, life would always be good. My children would choose “the right path”. Nothing in that formula gave me anything to draw on for this, other than to rain down righteous thunder on her. My ego was fully engaged for the battle to restore and preserve my illusions.
My daughter didn't need to draw on her gift of perception to know that something was wrong from the moment she entered the car. My rage was tangible and barely contained. As soon as we were home, I went to her room. As she cried, I demanded all of his letters. With her pleading for me to stop, I tore his photos from her wall. As my verbal assault escalated, I took her phone from the wall with such force that the jack outlet pulled loose and drywall crumbled to her floor. A fitting metaphor! My last act was to unplug her stereo, remove it, and return to confiscate all of her CDs.
Her father could only stare. No one had ever seen me like that. He made several weak attempts to ask what had happened. We left her, and I gave him the overview. Something held me back from providing details. Another act of grace.
In the kitchen, I fumed through dinner preparations. Because I refused to let her hide out in shame, I went upstairs to bring my daughter down to the table. I was so angry with her that I could barely breathe, much less think. Though I didn't want to look at her, I did not want her to have any refuge from the consequences of her choices.
I set out our meal on the table as my mind churned through increasingly harsh punishments. Most of them I dismissed as unenforceable. At the peak of the dark glee my angry thoughts were generating, I felt a still, small voice in my mind: “Wash her feet.”
I can only thank God I heard it. It still fills me with emotion, primarily gratitude and wonder. The hearing of that voice was pivotal. Every moment since then has been altered – purified – by having listened to that voice.
Raspberry Snapple Tea was a treat in our home. Everyone understood that it was their mom's favorite, and that it was kept here as a rare indulgence for me. New shoes, clothes, family outings, snacks, treats, and even Stewart's Root Beer – all were for the children. The Raspberry Snapple was mine. I often shared it with them, but the girls never took any without asking. It was the last thing I wanted to give my daughter at that moment. But I knew it was what I was supposed to do.
With the atmosphere tense enough to slice and serve, all eyes were on me, anxious to know what was going on: what had their sister done, and what would Mom do about it?
Silently, within moments of hearing that message, I reached for a glass, and filled it with ice. I went out to the garage to retrieve a bottle of the cherished tea, and filled the glass that I'm sure they all expected was for me. All of my rage melted from me as I walked to where my daughter sat, still crying, broken, yet hardening into a self-defensive bearing. I set the glass of tea in front of her, and bent to hug her.
She lunged into my arms. We both sobbed. Those were cleansing tears. Most surprisingly, she kissed me on the lips. My daughter hadn't done that in over a year. She had announced that she would not, and she had not. She would endure a kiss on her cheek, without returning it. It was one of many signs I had missed.
That single act of loving my daughter when she was decidedly unlovely to me changed the course of everything that followed. Without those angry screams of my own ego, I could recognize that her choices were not about me at all. She was a young human – she was struggling, needing guidance in the form of loving limits. She needed room to fail, something only unconditional love can offer. I had long believed that parental authority should be firm yet loving, never judgmental. Never wielded in anger. The pain I felt was the birthing of that belief into practice!
Naturally, there were consequences. My daughter was grounded. She was no longer permitted to have contact with the boy involved. She pleaded, but I was firm. We were able to talk about what happened, and I could genuinely hear her. I explained that she had lost my trust, and it would take time to earn it back. Yet her trust in me grew.
A week later, while on vacation, she asked me to go for a walk with her. She wanted to get the whole truth out. She confessed to more that she had done with the boy involved. They were hard things to hear, but I did not condemn her. Through delicate, respectful questioning, I tried to help her explore where her choices had truly taken her – was she feeling better about herself? More loved? Special? Beautiful? Respected?
Not long into that conversation, she opened up further. For over a year she had been wanting to tell me that she had been molested. The incident she shared had happened between her and the son of a close friend, while his mother was driving them to a movie. My daughter's trust would not have grown enough to let me help her through her pain without the simple act of pouring her that glass of tea.
The fruits of that “foot washing” experience did not end there. A year after receiving that letter, I was separated from my daughters' father, having asked him to leave. Shortly after separation, both of my oldest girls revealed they had experienced abuse from him. I cannot express the horror or pain of hearing those things. The illusion of a “perfectly imperfect” family crumbled completely. It was necessary and healthy. Disillusionment is a painful, wondrous experience.
Together, we have worked through a lot since then. At 20, my daughter has battled bulimia, been diagnosed as having bi-polar tendencies, deliberately overdosed, spent two weeks as an in-patient at an adolescent unit, and been through much therapy. Ours is not a tidy story. She has shown a lot of courage, and she knows there is still much healing to be done. Our relationship has not been an easy one.
I would not trade a moment of it.
Today, after more than five years, each one of my daughters is stronger, healthier, happier – and far from perfect! We all still struggle and continue to grow, and it is rarely pretty! Always, it is a work in progress.
My ego began a deeper death that day in August. In hindsight, I can see so much good that traces back to that moment. A single gesture of humble love had done more to meet the real need, the very present struggle of one of my children than any arbitrary act of retribution I could have conjured. When I stopped protecting illusions, I was able to start dealing with the unhealthy realities I had chosen not to see before.
I began by behaving as though she was “mine” – an extension and reflection of me. I did not see, or want to see an individual deserving of dignity! My urge was to hurt her for hurting me – though in my mind it was wrapped in parental language: teach her a lesson; lay down the law; nip that bad behavior in the bud!
Through one small act of love, I was able to begin to be conscious and present with her – show her true compassion. My presence with her in that painful moment told her she could trust me to reveal what had happened to her at the hands of a friend, and of her own father.
It was the last thing I wanted to give her. But it was the one thing I needed to do.
The inspiration for writing this post came from a group writing project organized and promoted by Three Monks -- three gifted blog writers whose work will inspire and enlighten you! Some link love for each of them:
Kenton Whitman
Wade at The Middle Way
Albert at Urban Monk
Read other entries in the "Spread The Love NOW!" project. Spread The Love NOW! at Urban Monk. Entries are also available on Kenton & Wade's sites. You will be moved. More than that, I hope you will be inspired to DO!
