Pedestals

Last night I dreamt that men were building platforms on the sides of a mountain and using children as stiff panels to help support these pedestals. They sacrificed their children to build platforms to reach the apex of the mountain. Ironically the children didn’t fall, but I feared as an onlooker that they would and wondered why these men chose their children to do something so dangerous and so deadly. I woke up this morning very perplexed as to why I would even have a dream such as this.

In my contemplation of these things, I prayed and began with myself. I asked the hard question, “For the sake of what dream or aspiration have I sacrificed my children? It’s difficult as a parent to even consider that I’ve surrendered my children in such a menacing and foolish way as to sit them on mountains and use them as building material to support pedestals of my own making. It is heart wrenching to regard. But we often use the shoulders of our children as convenient panels by which to frame our dreams and goals. However, I do believe there is a difference in allowing our child to be an inspiration to earn a degree, learn a trade and be better for the sake of providing a better life for them. Looking back over the years of rearing my children, I can see how I’ve done both. I’ve earned degrees to show my children the importance of education and to show them that even in the face of difficulty; they don’t have to give up. I also earned degrees to make more money to provide a better life for my children. On the flip side, I’m now aware that I placed the weight of my mountainous dream of being a broadcast journalist on the shoulders of my oldest daughter. Without my consciously being aware of it, my daughter became building material that would support my dream and eventually it became her dream. I’ve placed the weight of my dream of chastity and wholesome living on all my children. I ‘expected’ that they be better and do better than I’d done. Am I wrong to teach them to refrain from sexual intercourse until marriage, of course not, but I was wrong to place them on the side of a mountain that even I faltered upon as a youth. It is in God only that I should commit them not to my dreams for their lives. In this I have erred and allowed the disappointment of a failed expectation to dishearten me. I have been greatly moved when I should not be so displaced.

Sometimes the lines blurred and as a single-mother the lives of my children and my life became so intertwined that it was almost impossible for me to ‘see’ a life let a alone ‘have’ a life outside of them. It was so easy for my children’s lives to become my life. It was all innocently done. It was an unnoticeable side effect of parenting alone. But God comforts me as he does you. The children in the dream didn’t fall off the mountain to their deaths no matter how much I worried that they would do so. And God says, “The child will not share the guilt of the parent, nor will the parent share the guilt of the child” (Ezekiel 18:20, NIV). King David and a young Solomon come to mind. It was the temple of God that King David had a desire to build and made preparation for, but God said no and told David to leave the work for Solomon his son. It was because of blood guilt that David was not allowed to build the temple, but it was because of grace that God allowed Solomon his son to exceed at doing so. It is because of grace that God will not suffer the little children to be extinguished.

Father, forgive us for unknowingly building pedestals of ourselves upon our children. Cleanse us of all guilt of this act. Going forward in building loving relationships with our children, give us wisdom to discern those pedestal building moments and relinquish our assumed role as master builder: a role that belongs to you alone. I thank you that you hold up my children as I commit them into your hands to hold, protect and direct. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.