Well here it is, the end of the season already. This summer went by in in whirlwind, and boy was it blessed and busy for this middle aged grandma! Blessed because while my daughter, Malori, worked a part time job, Stan and I took care of our two grand children, Reeva and Teagan. Oh how quickly we forget how much time and energy a busy two year old and curious five year old can require of you. Was it worth the extra sleep and time adjustment it required? You bet! Especially since we knew that the our sweet Reeva would be starting kindergarten, and time with her would be at a premium come Fall.
Being away from mom and dad for longer periods of time isn’t always easy for little ones, so we decided to make the most of the precious time we had with them, and tried to make time at “Mooma” and “Papa’s” house fun, and filled with the joy and security that lots of love brings. And fun it was! I can’t tell you how many times we were surprised by the funny things that those two little ones said or did! Every time they came it was an adventure into the “Kid Kingdom of Thought”. One particular conversation with Reeva keeps coming to my mind.
Several years ago I was looking through the books at a thrift store and came across a good sized flip chart of the systems and anatomy of the human body. I was really interesting to me, and I decided to buy it. I introduced that book to Reeva and she loved it! We spent several hours over the summer looking at those charts. She looked at them so much, that she memorized what each page was about. At five years old she didn’t understand completely what the lymphatic system was, or how each part of the digestive system worked, or how “that baby got in that ladies belly”, but she was able to grasp how intricately and wonderfully God made our bodies.
One day, after spending about an hour of “serious study” on the human body with Reeva, and after answering lots and lots of questions, I was feeling so proud of my intelligent grand daughter, and said to her with great enthusiasm,
“Reeva, you are so interested in the human body. Maybe someday when you go to college, you will study to be a doctor or a nurse; or maybe you will want to be a scientist.”
At that moment, she stopped looking at the book, turned to me and said very emphatically,
“No, Mooma. When I grow up I am going to be a mermaid.”
Oh how quickly our bubble of pride can burst. I held back an enormous laugh, and instead just smiled and said, “Oh? Well that is good, too.”
Isn’t that how it is though, when you are little and your world is expanding? You dream what you will be when you grow up; today a mermaid, tomorrow a super hero, the next day a dinosaur hunter, or as my niece Sarah, when asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, “an apple”. (She is now a wife and mother, not an apple.)
If you are reading this, you realize that we cannot become an apple or a mermaid. But try and tell a five year old she can’t become a mermaid and you will no doubt meet with resistance. Her perception of reality just won’t let her believe she can’t grow a tail and breath under water. However, time, age, and reality have a way of making us see the necessity of adjusting.
I certainly have had to make adjustments, and sometimes, like a little child, I have been hard set against making the needed changes. Why? Because my reality has at times been painfully hard to view. For instance, and as I have written about before, my gray hair and “laugh lines” have told me over and over that I am not 20, or 30, or even 40 years old anymore. The fact is, I am running hard and fast toward 60 and I can’t do the things I did at 20! Somewhat painful, my friends, but true.
Then there is the reality of how the world around me is changing. I see changes that I never thought I would see in my lifetime. I remember back in the 70’s when I was a teenager. Things like having a chip that would hold all kinds of information implanted in you was like science fiction. Something far away in the future, but not when I was still living. And just imagine how my parents, people who grew up in 1940’s and 1950’s felt while raising children in the 1960’s and 1970’s! Talk about a changing world! From war efforts to war protests; from innocence to the sexual revolution; from big bands, to “American Band Stand” and “Soul Train”; from crew cuts to long locks on boys; from skirts below or at the knees to mini skirts for girls. I believe my parents raised kids during the biggest social change in our recent history. People my mom and dad’s age probably had to pick their chins up off the floor more than any other parents before them.
Now, I watch my daughter and son-in-law as they raise their children, and see how different it is from when I was raising my own. I see more and more often, that in order to effectively communicate with the next generation, we have to adjust. That doesn’t mean we have to say “yes” to things contrary to direction from God. Not in the least. But we must understand that those following us will do things differently. We need to see that their world is our world too. That their reality is our reality; because what is real, is real for everyone; it isn’t generational.
As much as we’d like things to stay the same, we need to let things that don’t matter, change. And there are only a few things that really do matter. Our most important job is to help prepare the next generation for the “great reality towards which all history is moving.” Along with that, we need to join them in the true reality of how things are right now. We must help them, not hinder. We need to allow them their “differences” so that they will be able to lead their generation and the next to come. Our children and grandchildren need us, so we must not disappear into the deep.
They don’t realize it yet, but someday this current generation will have to make adjustments of their own. We can either be examples of how to do it, or we can be mermaids.
And I don’t know about you, but I can’t breath underwater.
May the Lord cause you to flourish, both you and your children.
Psalm 115:14
