HELPING THE PUNY & FEEBLE [T, 1-21-25]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—HELPING THE PUNY & FEEBLE [T, 1-21-25]

 

Helen and I have been sick with colds for a couple of weeks. Friends have offered to help us, and they’ve gone ahead and done it. That’s tricky, helping old people, because we really do need help, often, but we usually don’t want to take it, because it cuts into our independence. So, here’s what I’m thinking about that…

Most of my life was spent with church people, but I also got to be part of other communities--theater, music, social justice, coffee house, cancer… For a long time, the running community was important to me.

I enjoyed running companions. Sweating and panting are great equalizers. In the running community, I wasn’t “the preacher,” just another guy struggling to survive. Dick and I lived in the same neighborhood, so often ended up in a group of three or four who encountered one another on the streets and then ran together.

One day I said I had to quit early to go to one of daughter Katie’s cross-country meets. I said it had been difficult, but in 12 years of having children in school, I had never missed one of their school events—academics, band, drama, sports, etc. I knew that Dick’s daughter ran on the cross-country team, so I asked him if he were going to the meet, too.

He rather self-righteously, or so it seemed to me, pronounced that he had never seen his daughter in any school event. That was her world, not his. She needed to learn how to negotiate in her world by herself. [I was probably projecting the self-righteousness, since I probably sounded self-righteous in bragging about going to the activities of my daughters.]

The meaning was clear: he was a better parent than I, because he neglected his children. That’s the way I heard it, and it both angered and confused me.

I’m still confused. Did Dick really think that was best? Did he think any psychologist would agree with him, that being that absent in a kid’s life was good for them? Did he do it to help his daughter, really, or just to make it easy on himself? Did it actually work?

I don’t know the answer to that last question. She and my daughter were nominal friends. She seemed like a nice girl. But we moved away before I got to see her as an adult.

My guess, though, is that she was okay. My pastoral counseling professor, Carroll Wise, used to say that if your kids know you love them and know that you are well-intentioned, they will forgive you a lot of parenting mistakes.

I once called on an elderly lady in a church where I had just been appointed pastor. We had a nice conversation. She told me how much her adult daughter helped her, how well the daughter was doing, despite some difficult circumstances, including the death of her husband. “But,” she said, “these days you never know how a kid is going to turn out.”

The “kid” was fifty-three years old, and a university professor.

There is some relationship truth in what Dick said. Even as old people, we sometimes need to step back and let folks do things for themselves, admit that it’s their world.

What’s the right mix, though, of helping and backing off? Who knows?

I’m old enough that I need help, but not too much help. I need to be able to do some things for myself, from getting my coat on to preparing to die.

Do the best you can. I know you’re well-intentioned. I’ll forgive you if you overhelp.

John Robert McFarland