The Mercury / Wednesday

The points of a Brave Parent

Please join me in reading this to your children…. / kindly add your own to the list….

When I say I love you, despite my many failings, I want you to know what I really mean:

1. I will seek your highest good even if it causes you necessary pain.

2. I will do all I can to encourage you in pursuing your God-given freedoms.

3. I will treasure your gifts, skills, aspirations, and get out of your way so you may achieve them.

4. I will get “in your face” and in your way if it appears you are willing to waste your potential.

5. I will support your desire for education and apply my efforts to help you secure it.

6. I will unconditionally love your friends as if they were treasured family.

7. I will resist any semblance of laziness I detect within you and offer it no cooperation at all.

8. I will try not to over-protect you and therefore suggest you are incapable of being without me.

9. I will try not to under-protect you and therefore leave you vulnerable for challenges that, at this point in your young life, you are yet unprepared to face.

10. I will listen to you, yet constantly remind you that it is more important that you listen to me.

11. I will show you how I interact with God and invite you to participate and ask you to give thoughtful respect towards my tradition. (Wes Whitesell)

The Mercury – with the start of school

The outstanding student:

• Reads, performs, completes assignments, beyond minimal expectations – he or she loves the work into being.

• Shows up and speaks up without being disrespectful – he or she knows that courtesy is possible under all circumstances.

• Knows that listening to those appointed to teach is one of several keys to success – he or she knows it is almost always more important to listen than it is to speak.

• Learns to connect a variety of disciplines and sees the whole – he or she respects the interrelatedness or all things.

• Understands that willing, but not blind, obedience is the beginning of leadership development – he or she knows a person learns to lead by learning to follow.

• Takes responsibility for his or her own progress and operates without blaming anyone for anything – he or she knows that hardships can be the fuel of greatness.

• Understands that there is a price to be paid for excellence – he or she knows that the rejection of peers is sometimes the cost of being outstanding.

• Engages, initiates, and is unafraid to ask thoughtful questions – he or she knows the engaged student brings joy and enthusiasm to the dedicated teacher.

• Knows that teachers are a bonus, not an essential – many educated men and women are self-educated.

• Understands that academic pursuits come first – that all else is secondary.

“My husband is very controlling. He monitors my phone (‘it’s a dangerous world’) my dress (‘why would you want to attract unnecessary attention’) and where I am (‘you know how unsafe things are’) and has unreasonable expectations when it comes to intimacy (‘there must be someone else if you don’t want….’). This is suffocating me. I am finding it hard to love him with all the ‘love’ he insists on showing me. The stronger he gets the more I am repelled. I can’t say so because he becomes desperate and then physical. He will restrain me from going anywhere until we have ‘made love’ to ‘seal our relationship’ before I can leave the house.”

The above is not an actual letter. I developed it on behalf three women whom I have known and who have described these binds to me. The women are not clients. They have spoken at public events to illustrate the extent of their cooperation that leads to these degrees of toxicity in some relationships.

If you (male or female) see yourself in any one of these toxic binds, please, get the help you need.

Freedom is the hallmark of love. Jealousy is not; controlling is not.

Get free before you are “loved” to death!

Hoards of us are over-privileged. We are indulged and entitled.

We are demanding, self-centered, often impossible.

We eat too much, spend too much, waste mounds of everything, and get annoyed if things don’t go exactly according to our self-centered plans.

This includes me, of course, which is not for some appearance of humility.

Perhaps like you, I can be quite impossible.

This condition of being over-privileged is most crudely evident when we waste what we already have, and then expect more of whatever it is we’ve already squandered.

It’s seeing life as a bottomless cup – for phones, cars, computers, houses, travel, and even for friends.

How quickly I lose sight that there are billions of people who would readily trade their lives for mine and for all I have, for where I live, for what I do, and for my day to day comforts – and probably do a better job at leveraging it all for the good of all.

At my worst I am drunk on myself – and I see others who are equally hung-over.

At my best I am low-maintenance. I serve. I love. I use all I have for the betterment of all – the very purpose of blessing and wealth.

At my best I am part of the solution to the problems in the world.

At my worst, I am the problem.