Most people have or have had a hero or a heroine in their lifetime. Some may wear capes, some may deliver presents alongside eight tiny reindeer, some may wear scrubs, while others don puffy suits and walk on the moon. For many of us, our parents and extended family are also heroic—although it is important to acknowledge that this isn’t the case for everyone. In our youth, our parents seem invincible; they know so much! They teach us to walk, to speak, to ride bikes; they disappear for hours on end and come home filled with enough energy to still play with us and continue to teach new and exciting things.
Then, around the age of twelve to thirteen, our heroines or heroes start to become ‘less’ in our minds. As we age, the luster surrounding mythical crusaders and our loved ones, fades. We begin to see cracks in the armor of these valiant beings—that they are human after all, or that they simply don’t exist. The sleigh and reindeer are fake, and someone has been stealing our teeth this whole time; OR our parents become human and we start noticing that their energy is waning. Either way, our world-view is diminished somewhat because of our own arrogance. We start to think that we know more. We begin to think that they know less. We stop taking the advice of those who reared us into existence and taught us to tie our shoes, instead choosing to speak to them with condescending tones and very little patience.
Picture this borrowed example:
A young child’s first word is duck. Every day, all day long, the only word that comes out of their mouths is ‘duck’. “Duck! Duck…duck, duck, duck…” and so it goes. The parent/guardian smiles deeply with joy, knowing that their offspring is beginning to understand the world—all those sacrifices and sleepless nights are bearing fruit as the first words form. For weeks, ‘duck’ is the only word they hear—yet it is the sweetest sound, like a symphony of joy playing on repeat.
Years later, more words are formed. These, unlike the first, come in waves of good and bad; the symphony is diminished a bit. Sometimes the child-turned-young adult says harsh words. Sometimes it’s so bad that they actually cause pain to the one who taught them to speak. Tears of joy turn to ash and are replaced by tears of frustration and anger. “Where did I go wrong? How did we go from ‘Duck’ to ‘You don’t care about me’”? Parents become the target of everything wrong with our lives, and we often place blame where it doesn’t belong.
Then, one day, the parent is telling a story on the phone or in a living room and the adult child interrupts, “You’ve already told me this.” With little patience, the child cuts off the story, trying to move on to the next ‘thing’. The parent, eyes misty and heart hurting, looks at the child and says, “Remember your first word?”
“Yes, of course…it was ‘duck’, why?”
“I remind you just because I want you to know that I never got tired of hearing your voice, even if it was the same thing over and over…”
That’s what we do to our heroes and heroines. We diminish them, then we prematurely silence them in many ways. We retire them early, in terms of advice or wisdom, and then realize too late that we should’ve listened to that story one more time, or waited patiently while they searched for the word they’d lost in their minds.
God is our parent. Our ultimate parent. During our youth, God is heroic—giving his only son, forgiving our sins, granting our prayers, and just being awesome all the time. That’s God for a child. We never blame God for anything in those early years—we just know that God loves us and we love God…and if bad stuff happens, we wonder why but we know that our parents and God will still love us. We ask God to take care of our friends. Then we get older. The world takes a darker tint and our experiences lead us to depressive states. Suddenly, instead of saying ‘I love you, Jesus’, some people challenge his existence. Rather than folding our little hands at night before bed and praying for our moms and dads, we turn off the lights and stare blankly at the ceiling, thinking about the next day.
And sometimes we just give up on God’s same ol’ stories and become impatient—waiting on another miracle or answered prayer to appear. When it doesn’t, we get angry and stop listening. God stops becoming our hero and heroine, and instead becomes a source from which all blame and anger can be cast. We forget our bible stories, we stop spending time in prayer, we stop thinking about others and hyper-focus on ourselves.
Just like the parent from the example earlier, God sighs too deep for words. Ever-patient, he waits for us to return, holding ready with a longing embrace. God remembers that our creation wasn’t to be subservient and robotic—that would be pointless. Instead, that memory is of a race created to love one another and love God, back. Our harsh words and thoughtless actions undo this image, separating it from the one intended. Our God, our hero, is diminished every time something bad happens.
Why?
What did we ever do to earn grace? What have we ever done to deserve prosperity or love? What right to we have to demand miracles and answered prayers from a God who already gave everything to keep the doors of eternal life opened? On the same token, why do we treat our parents the same way? Those who taught us to hold a fork, put shoes on the correct feet, and tried to love us to the best of their ability; don’t they deserve a bit more patience and a lot less blame? Doesn’t God? If loving God and our folks is contingent upon recurring blessings, then that’s not real love—that’s a transactional relationship. “If you do this, I’ll do that” shouldn’t be our reason to love the people around us, and it damned sure shouldn’t be the reason we love God.
It turns out that our heroes and heroines never fail us—we fail them. Just like we continuously fail God. Yet, throughout all those failings, God remains with us just waiting for us to accept that the free will in this created life is what takes it away or makes it better—not because some cosmic being arbitrarily decides who lives and dies, who’s rich or poor, who’s loved or hated. When terrible things happen to us, I hope we remember that we have a choice in those moments: We can choose to blame God or our parents, or we can choose to remember that this is a life in which we can’t control everything and sometimes, stuff happens. It’s what we do after that matters. We can still see our Creator and parents as heroes and heroines. With the latter, we can love them through the later years and remember that they changed our diapers once, too. That they were patient when we didn’t know the words. That they stayed up late with us, losing sleep, so that we could cry while being held.
With God, we can remember that we did nothing to deserve the spark of life. We can recognize that God isn’t to blame for all the crap that happens in this world; that he always cares and is willing to hold us while we cry, rejoice, or are simply in need of love.
And then, we can become the heroes and heroines that our parents are.
And then, we can become the children of God that he so desperately longs for us to be.
Faithfully,
Fr. Sean+