The Bridges of Madison's Counting
I could hear her poise across a large, family-style restaurant table and through the surrounding din. Her composure made a particular impression projected from a 14-year-old kid. Madison, not her real name, held forth on the differences between her structured biological family and the freewheeling style of her best friend's family surrounding her now. "How can you not have a bedtime?! How can you be allowed to use your devices whenever you want, even take them to bed?!" I've come to appreciate the less structured family that she was comparing her to own more and more as I've spent time with them. Even so, it was hard to argue with the results Madison presented as Exhibit A in favor of more strict, more culturally Christian parenting. Then she continued with the clarity a few minutes' hearing taught me to expect. This is a direct quote, not an abridged summary sharpened to make a point: "All my parents' rules have taught me is how to be a really good liar."
I'm still trying to remove that point from my pricked conscience. My wife and I are still trying to adopt as first-time parents at middle age. I've had more time than most to construct an ideal of parenting without having to accommodate my ideal to what transpires in real households between parents and children who are both works in progress. Madison offers me expert testimony in the impact of both my idealism and my idolatry. Insist on the polished image rather than the awkward, messy, grace-necessitating relationship between flawed, maturing parent and flawed, maturing child, and THIS is what you get after 14 years. She manages practiced, perfect diction for adult strangers, but she notices an urge she can't quite explain to hide her device when a parent comes into the room – even when there is nothing on that device of which she should be ashamed.
I'm still trying to remove that point from my pricked conscience. My wife and I are still trying to adopt as first-time parents at middle age. I've had more time than most to construct an ideal of parenting without having to accommodate my ideal to what transpires in real households between parents and children who are both works in progress. Madison offers me expert testimony in the impact of both my idealism and my idolatry. Insist on the polished image rather than the awkward, messy, grace-necessitating relationship between flawed, maturing parent and flawed, maturing child, and THIS is what you get after 14 years. She manages practiced, perfect diction for adult strangers, but she notices an urge she can't quite explain to hide her device when a parent comes into the room – even when there is nothing on that device of which she should be ashamed.
Dad-to-be and college counselor, she might has well have cautioned me directly although aware of neither of my roles, you have a tendency to cast the maturing human, and in particular the poised adolescent girl, in a role to meet your surface-level expectations. Those entrusted to your leadership may well prioritize performing for you over becoming the unique individual God created them to be. Although the decades He grants humans to mature compared to the animal kingdom seem protracted, they are in fact crammed with crucial thresholds of self-definition. Would I rather, Madison's example and analysis admonishes in advance, the child entrusted to me spend her experience and energy projecting, protecting, pretending to please me, or seeking after God's unique calling with her whole heart?
This is not, of course, a single intersection with only one crucial choice, casting parent and child forever in their respective roles. The family I watched which tends to believe predominantly in the value of self discovery has come to that conclusion together over time. As one of them asserted to Madison's startled inquiries, if I stay up too late because my parents give me the option, it's up to me to suck it up the next day. Not everyone, child or adult, is as intelligent or self-aware as is the norm in this particularly trusting family. If I come away from Madison's epiphany, combine it with my own tendency to be lazy and passive and call it a faith-filled trust in the sovereignty of God, I have not learned the lesson of this encounter. I am called, to use the instruction of secular vocational leadership in Ronald A. Heifetz's The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, to stay diagnostic even as I take action. What is working? What is not working? What purposes are my preferences serving? What purposes that really matter are my preferences undermining?
Projecting forward into my next great role of fatherhood, will I be open to the impressions that my senses and my heartstrings offer me, that perhaps I have allowed distance to develop between my expectations and my child's true self? Would he or she REALLY be more likely to confide in me aware of disappointed expectations? If I fail in this, pronounces the ghost of Parenting Future, combining the product of Dickens' pen in collusion with Jacqueline Kennedy's verdict on the predominant importance of true parenthood, nothing else I do matters very much.
Since I believe in God's sovereignty, and He has not yet granted me actual parenting privileges, this week's meditation and confrontation has applications beyond that particular role. What expectations do I, do we, bring into relationships that impede full disclosure and authentic growth? How is my, or our, ever-deepening habit of self-centered impatience forcing others to play a typecast role in our lives rather than fully develop to show us God's glory in some way we would have never anticipated? Where I am prone to use the label of increased authenticity to give vent to my own persistent immaturity? Where is life teaching us a distinct difference between disciplined, timely, selective expression and a fearful or manipulative premium on impressing other people? Focused as we might be on how to, or not to, wield authority, how are we changing that by how we respond to authority? We are all, like Madison, adolescents in the process of becoming in one or more areas. Will we have her candor in admitting our true motivations, confessing them, and avoiding the tendency to project them on others?
This is not, of course, a single intersection with only one crucial choice, casting parent and child forever in their respective roles. The family I watched which tends to believe predominantly in the value of self discovery has come to that conclusion together over time. As one of them asserted to Madison's startled inquiries, if I stay up too late because my parents give me the option, it's up to me to suck it up the next day. Not everyone, child or adult, is as intelligent or self-aware as is the norm in this particularly trusting family. If I come away from Madison's epiphany, combine it with my own tendency to be lazy and passive and call it a faith-filled trust in the sovereignty of God, I have not learned the lesson of this encounter. I am called, to use the instruction of secular vocational leadership in Ronald A. Heifetz's The Practice of Adaptive Leadership, to stay diagnostic even as I take action. What is working? What is not working? What purposes are my preferences serving? What purposes that really matter are my preferences undermining?
Projecting forward into my next great role of fatherhood, will I be open to the impressions that my senses and my heartstrings offer me, that perhaps I have allowed distance to develop between my expectations and my child's true self? Would he or she REALLY be more likely to confide in me aware of disappointed expectations? If I fail in this, pronounces the ghost of Parenting Future, combining the product of Dickens' pen in collusion with Jacqueline Kennedy's verdict on the predominant importance of true parenthood, nothing else I do matters very much.
Since I believe in God's sovereignty, and He has not yet granted me actual parenting privileges, this week's meditation and confrontation has applications beyond that particular role. What expectations do I, do we, bring into relationships that impede full disclosure and authentic growth? How is my, or our, ever-deepening habit of self-centered impatience forcing others to play a typecast role in our lives rather than fully develop to show us God's glory in some way we would have never anticipated? Where I am prone to use the label of increased authenticity to give vent to my own persistent immaturity? Where is life teaching us a distinct difference between disciplined, timely, selective expression and a fearful or manipulative premium on impressing other people? Focused as we might be on how to, or not to, wield authority, how are we changing that by how we respond to authority? We are all, like Madison, adolescents in the process of becoming in one or more areas. Will we have her candor in admitting our true motivations, confessing them, and avoiding the tendency to project them on others?
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