The Hardest Lesson

The most liberating truth I’ve come to realize as a parent is also the most terrifying: It is not my job to shield my children from pain and suffering.

This is not the message you receive when you first make eye contact on their birth day, when they are new. This deception is necessary. Their newborn scent and tiny faces contain the formula that awakens a sense of innate protection. These seemingly fragile creatures are so helpless. Then, you learn a hard lesson a little more after the introduction: They can only rightfully become themselves if you let go—and let them—a little more each day, the right way.

How do you let them go the right way? Part of it is accepting that they will run home alone one day, because you’ve shown them the way. But it will look different each time. There will be a fallen branch that causes them to stumble; construction that requires a detour; or an unexpected encounter with a stranger that leads to a lifelong friendship, or heartache… If they know you will be waiting there for them, as you have been many times before, they will remember the way.

Time and numbers inevitably make you let go, whether or not you want to. Time that reveals… And numbers like ages, or numbers of children. Not because you care less but because you see more. You’ve read more than you can recall. Heard more advice than you care to remember. Researched neighborhoods and school districts only to find that the best is sometimes the worst for reasons you never considered before, like the poverty that exists when there is too much of a good thing… Like, too much parenting. In giving too much you rob yourself and them. You rob yourself of sanity and you rob them of the kind of wisdom acquired through seeing rather than hearing.

You learn that the best homes aren’t wrapped up in stucco or brick boxes located in the best neighborhoods. Home is something you wrap and unwrap every day, like arms. Arms wrapped around bodies that provide warmth—that easily take on the shape of the ones they hold. That never stay closed for very long. Arms like homes that can easily open up to extend hands that unlock closed doors. You learn home is something you give. You keep them close but realize these children are gifts that give back to more than just you, the more you learn to let go. You only hold them in your arms until you teach them to walk, so that they can build worlds that look like the safe homes they’ve known.

If you’ve done it right, home feels safe wherever it is. It provides shelter but it has windows that break… Windows you can see past, and that look onto more than what you could ever hold inside your arms or four walls. Then those living inside look outside and feel the call to wander. There are boundaries, and though the boundary lines are never fixed they provide what those behind it need to feel confident enough to wander one day.

We have already seen so much with our own eyes, but it is impossible to rehash all the details to make it real enough to these new souls we are responsible for. Letting go means revealing more as we prepare them to hear it. We pull back the curtains, open the windows, and somehow feel like it’s harder to breathe in the unfamiliar air. For so long, we have edited from our own experiences; we’ve retold others’ stories from our own perspectives, omitting truths with good intentions. Some stories, histories, are still gruesome in spite of our edits. Some histories have fooled us into thinking we’ve abandoned battlegrounds but somehow there are still fresh wounds. And how we want to avoid the wounds. Our old wounds, the everyday wounds, and the wounds of others we must bind. Our children’s wounds always feel the deepest, don’t they? But how will they ever learn to bind the wounds of others if we never teach them how to fall, get back up, and bind their own wounds?

We teach them how to communicate as soon as they learn how to babble because we have seen what happens when words are too many, too few, too loud, or too soft. We teach them that there are words for their tears because tantrums only disrupt peace with anger. We want them to walk soon after they learn how to stand because we know that the world will leave them behind (we cannot carry them forever and we cannot accomplish anything when we are standing still). But we also explain that some never found their voice because their world was too loud, or they were silenced. Then we learn that they understand more when we show rather than tell. So we show them when to use their voice to help translate the confusing emotions of others so that conflicts can be avoided. We show them how to speak up for those who have been forced to whisper. We show them how to carry those who cannot walk anymore because they have grown tired wandering far from whatever housed the home they never had.

It is an intimidating task—letting go. They see more and understand more than we think they do, and more than we do, too. But if we at least take the time to see all of them; love them for all they are; hold them in our arms, then hold their hand, and let go…they will do more than just run back home-- they will have the confidence to fly and see the world from a different perspective than we ever did, and inevitably make it better than we ever could.