Remarks on Parents and Parenting
Texts: Proverbs 22:6; Luke 2:16, 22, 24, 39, 40
Date: December 13, 2009
Marian Rees
As we celebrate another Christmas season, I am more deeply, acutely, aware of parents. Though I am not a parent, I am sensitive of how the attention and focus on children tends to marginalize their presence in the celebration. So, my focus today is on parents and parenting.
Shortly after arriving on this island, I stopped by EHCC to pause and to reflect on how I came to be here, on Bainbridge Island, having lived in Los Angeles for 52 years.
As I sat in the empty church with those thoughts swirling around in my head, a Tsunami wave of gratitude for my parents swept over me: gratitude for their unconditional love. How truly significant they had been in shaping my life choices; and guiding the adult I had become. They understood Proverbs 22: “Train up a child in the way she/he should go, and when the child is old she/he will not depart from it.”
I developed a deeper and fuller consciousness of how these two young people fully accepted their responsibility as parents to provide the context of our lives in which we were raised. I am reminded again and again, if not for my parents raising us in a Christian home, how different my life would have been.
I recalled the film, as many of us do during this holiday season, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” George Bailey despairs of the value of his life, wishing he had never been born. His Guardian Angel, Clarence, appears and demonstrates how the small village of Bedford Falls and the lives of his loved ones would have been bleaker and without meaning had he not been born. It gave me pause to reflect on my life… how it would have been so barren without that nurturing of my parents. My parents were humble people. I was born in a small Iowa town in the flush of the depression; no one exempt from its crushing grip. My father worked as a meat cutter in the local grocery store. Others referred to him (benignly) as “a butcher” – a phrase that offended his sense of self. My mother cared for her family with a devotion that exceeded her physical energy. From the time I was two she literally struggled to breathe, her wind tube partially paralyzed as a result of a surgical error during an emergency thyroidectomy. A surgery that robbed her of what had been described as a gifted voice of brilliant beauty. She not only lost that gift, but was told she would never talk again.
In the two years she was bedridden, she willed her vocal chords to function. I later learned from her that one of the greatest sadness’s in her life was that she could not read to me when I was a young child. Such a small thing, but to her, an important experience; the experience of bonding between mother and child.
As young parents they drew on their own deep reserves of uncommon character: theirs was an active faith, girded and supported by our church. Come Sunday, we were off to Sunday school, our resoled shoes polished, my hair combed and brushed, each clutching the dime given us for the offering. The walk to church was a family affair. Mother wore her only hat which flattered her long locks of hair, its beauty the envy of the high school girls. Dad’s one suit to-fit-all occasions, was worn with a special flare short of immodesty. They were a handsome couple. They were a happy couple. They were a responsible couple; faithfully observing the Sunday’s as “family church day.” Life was good for them. But Pearl Harbor changed everything that December Sunday morning. The sounds of the muffled arguments that wore on into late night hours seeped upstairs into my bedroom; the urgent pleading of mother; dad’s voice shivering with the ambivalence he felt. He understood the patriotic call Bobby felt, a call that pierced the hearts of all parents dealing with the imminent danger to their sons. Bob’s persistence was unwavering and only increased as his high school friends went off with Iowa’s National Guard for the desert of North Africa, on to the boot of Italy and coursing through into Europe. Finally our parents yielded, and Bobby went off to fight his war as a marine in the South Pacific.
Was that experience for my parents somewhat reminiscent of Mary and Joseph’s journey to find Jesus in the temple and their fears and apprehensions for their son?
Rich resources abound in scripture to support parents in those most difficult and challenging decisions in their family’s life.
“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when the child is old h/she will not depart from it.”
My parents never wavered in their responsibility for the individual lives of their children. For me, a young woman growing up in rural Iowa, there was no role model for a woman’s college education. And my parents had no ready resources for one. Yet when our minister’s wife urged my parents that I should/must receive a college education, they did not hesitate. Though they had no money to contribute to that endeavor, I had their unbridled commitment and support – and so with a merit scholarship and a job as a waitress at the student union, I began my studies at the University of Iowa.
Each decision in my adult life was guided by their unwavering support. Every decision in my professional career was influenced by their integrity and sense of honor.
I share these thoughts with you on this special Sunday of a pre-Christmas celebration of family.
Yes, train up a child in the way it should go and when the child is older that child will not depart from it.
This church, this community, is blessed, enriched by the commitment each of you has mad as caring and loving parents. It is you we celebrate this Christmas season.