Like Chaucer's travelers to Canterbury, a company of folks are heading to Jerusalem with Jesus in the 40 day pilgrimage Christians call Lent. Each week during Sunday worship, Crescent Fort Rouge United will meet one of that company in a monologue. This Sunday, we hear from a mother.
His father got it wrong.
It wasn’t just our younger son who was lost, the one who skidded off the rails so dramatically, the one who got us to sell half our land so he could have cold, hard cash, only to waste every last coin on intoxicants and bad company. He was lost to us, yes, treating us like human vending machines instead of parents with a bit of wisdom about the world and a lot of love for him. He’s the famous one in the story, the younger son. Everybody likes a bad boy.
But my husband got it wrong.
Our elder son was lost, too.
If the younger treated us as human vending machines so he could squander it all on a way of life I don’t care to think about, our elder son also didn’t see us as parents. He never could just lean back into the love we have for him, but always was trudging around trying to please us. I often wished he would show a bit more spirit. He was so worried about earning his place in our family that he built a wall around himself with bricks of resentment and the mortar of bitterness, imagining nothing he did was ever good enough. He was trying to earn his place in a family he was already part of. It’s as if he thought, “If I work really hard, they will like me.” Not “If I work really hard, they will love me” – he was so lost he was content with like from his own family. He was so lost he couldn’t see the love that was already there.
I don’t know how both our boys got so lost. Being family is the hardest work in the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment