Nights Like These – A Parent's Lament

It is late, and I should be in bed. Ask any homeschooling mom, and she will tell you. The mathematical probability of a kid needing to talk is directly proportional to her determination to get to bed early. Here's the thing – I tell myself I homeschool for just such nights as these. My son can stay up late and pour his heart out until his words are spent. I did it for his brother. Turn about is fair play.

By Courtesy and in Loving Memory of Christina Jones Hooker

Wanna know the ugly truth? I'm older now, and when I've been up writing till the wee hours for the last three nights, the last thing I wanna do is sit and listen with grace and empathy. Especially when I know we are going to grind over and over the same old territory we just covered the last few times we navigated nights like this one. I want easy answers and quick solutions. I wanna snap my fingers and hiss, “Go to bed!”

I look at the clock. I wonder how much longer till he will have exhausted all he can say. I watch for him to slump with relief as he realizes the pressure valve of words has been released. In that moment, the tears rise in my eyes, and the ache in my heart threatens to rip my chest open. I am sure I am a failure because even the answers I have fail to pacify him.

Oh, for the days when he would hear the loud noise of trucks half a mile away and cling to my leg for reassurance. It was so easy then. A pat on his baby head and the words, “S-h-h-h, baby, it's just a truck,” were enough. He'd toddle on off to play, and I could sigh a big ole fat sigh of parental success. Where did those days go?

Courtesy A. Squires

Now the insecurities that bring him running concern life, faith, and truth. Is my life going to have meaning, or will I just survive some dead end job in a life without purpose? Who is trustworthy? What makes them trustworthy? Is God trustworthy, and how do I know? Will I be a good spouse, and how do I get from here to there? Why does it take so long to grow up and get where I wanna go? Which Algebra lesson will be the fatal dose? Oh, the agony of youth. Oh the agony of parenting when easy answers no longer do the job.

I sit and try to recover from the onslaught of intense emotions that overwhelmed him. I wonder how to prepare for the next time. He slips back in the room with his head bent low. Wordlessly, he drops down beside me and wraps his gangly arms around me. I do what I have done since he was a baby safe in my belly. I pray.

I pray that I will be sufficient to the task and that God's strength will be made perfect in my frailty. I pray that he will protect my deep thinking son from a world that offers so many easy, but counterfeit, answers. I recount the verses that promise we are created for a unique purpose with good works to fulfill before God hung the world in place.

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

We sit in the quiet until my tears subside. We agree that it is hard to talk and hard to be heard. Even harder to feel understood. We have survived despite our capacity to wound each other. I realize that this is part of entering into my son's life and into the fellowship of his youthful suffering. But it is hard. And it is late. And I am spent already from the sadness in my own life.

And then, I see the Son of Man bending near. How often he has been up late watching over me even as he counted the hairs on your head. One thing did not distract him from the other. Fatigue did not provoke him to hiss and hurry us along. When his answers were hard for me to hear and even harder for me to understand, he waited as the night grew later.

Unlike me, he never wondered how to prepare for the next time I would come crying or complained that he was insufficient to meet my need. As I mop up the emotional flood that's left behind our late night pow-wow, I realize my son can neither feel nor comprehend my suffering on his behalf.

Courtesy Mad Penguin Creative

Oh, how much I have in common with my hurting son in light of all the days God has seemed insufficient to act on my behalf and understand my suffering. God sees my childish lament and knows the corners I cannot see around. He anticipates what I am yet too immature to grasp. He waits for me to catch up as I mature in faith. I do not try his patience nor exhaust his eternal strength. Not only is he sufficient for me, I do not have to be sufficient for my hurting son because God is and always will be. 

Courtesy B. Creasy - 2010

Isaiah 53:5 (Easy to Read Version)But he was being punished for what we did. He was crushed because of our guilt. He took the punishment we deserved, and this brought us peace. We were healed because of his pain.