UMC20260125 - Your children are not your children¶
It was Alexandra’s first few days at school this past week and a half. Dom and I felt a confusing mix of emotions. We found ourselves asking questions like: How can we let people we don’t know spend more hours with our most precious child than we do? And, what if they teach her to become something we would never choose for her?
There is something deeply unsettling about releasing your child into the world. It felt like an ending; the quiet closing of six extraordinary months of being her only carers, of learning who she is without interference. We cried. It was hard.
What we are now being forced to confront is this: we are not ultimately responsible for her growth. Not us, and not even her teachers. We can influence her, shape her environment, and offer her direction; but she will grow regardless of our control. In fact, it would be terrifying if her destination depended entirely on us.
This week I’ve been sitting with a poem by Kahlil Gibran that captures this truth with unsettling clarity:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
If this is true of parents and children, I can’t help but wonder: does God feel the same way about us? And if so, what does that say about control, trust, and love?
Love, Cliff