A Flower That Opens in the Morning and Closes at Night

If anyone had told me having a kid would be like wearing my heart outside my body…. 

I read this in an essay once. 

If anyone had told me that birthing another human being would become the ultimate lesson in powerlessness and lack of control….

What? Would I have avoided it?

No.

There are tough, heart-wrenching moments being a parent though. Plus, I always had grand plans of who my children would be.

In the end, I have only one child. 

So, all those plans are pointed in his singular direction.

Lucky kid!

The other challenge here is that my son has always been very clear about who he is and what he wants. Unlike me—a seasoned people pleaser—he has never done anything to impress anyone. (“Why would I go to a semi-formal dance, Mom? I hate those things.”) 

I wanted him to be a Boy Scout, because my family was all involved in scouting. But he lasted only two meetings as a Tiger Cub (“Who wants to sit around in a circle and talk and make houses out of popsicle sticks?”). 

Because I worked with overnight camps, I encouraged him to go to one because it would help shape him into a young leader. (“Nope,” he insisted. “No interest.”)

After three years of intense travel hockey, as we were driving him here, there, and everywhere—including private goalie lessons on synthetic ice—he hung up his skates for good (“It’s just not fun anymore, Mom.”).

My son is also super athletic, so after one Little League season, I asked, “Don’t you want to try out for All-Star baseball?” (“Nah, I don’t think so. I think I need a break.”) 

Darn him.

He refused to follow every perfect agenda I laid out.

What the _______?

But at the same time, now that that he is in his mid-twenties, I am getting it. 

It’s not about my agenda at all.

It’s not about me.

Whaaaaaat?

It’s his life. It’s his journey. It’s his path.

A friend of mine once said that a child is like a lotus flower in stasis. While we can fret about their future anytime we want, it won’t change the path that they are on.

In fact, the fretting makes life that much more stressful.

Did you know that lotus seeds can live for over 200 years without blooming? And that they can then suddenly revive into activity after years of being inactive?

While it might seem like that a flower is not changing, they may be busy moving through the world, quietly taking in the nutrients that they need under the surface. It may not look like much at the time, because their roots run deep and wide. But when the morning comes, a lotus flower can bloom, clean and without stains out of the mud, pure as ever.

Do you have a lotus flower in your life?

What nutrients are they gathering under the surface that you can’t see?

One of my friends recently shared a paragraph from a book she was reading. The narrator—a daughter—was lamenting that she knew her mother got scared whenever she was sad. And the result was that her mother Julia was “always trying to shove her daughter toward happiness.” 

Is there someone in your life that you are trying to shove toward happiness?

Or toward some agenda that you hold for them, but that they don’t hold for themselves?

I came across some wisdom about this recently. The point was that if we are constantly nagging someone else to do something, feel something, or be something—whether it’s our child, spouse, or a friend—it turns their focus toward us and our nagging instead of on their own journey and path forward.

Which means the planning and the worrying and the fretting is an energy suck. Both for the object of our nagging, and for us.

Dear Universe: 

I pledge not to be a distraction on my child’s path. I pledge to focus on my own body of water. On my own roots. On the nutrients I need.

I pledge to allow my child the dignity of taking care of his own life. Allow them him to set his own compass. Allow him the sovereignty to find his own way.

He had that sovereignty already.

And I can see that with it, he is bending toward the sun.

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