Sophie's Choice

I feel a little like Meryl Streep in Sophie’s Choice.

(If you’re a mother and that doesn’t conjure up a mental heartwrench for you, read the book by Styron.)

When I was pregnant for the second time, I felt a strange compassion for that unknown child. Katherine was so exceptionally stellar in every way, how could anyone survive following in those formidable firstborn footsteps? But as soon as the brave little intruder and I connected on the delivery table, I got it. “He loves each of us as if there were only one of us...”

And so we love our children, unless we are impaired beyond repair.

But unlike the perfect parent, I cannot be in more than one place at a time. Now I am in a tropical paradise celebrating a milestone with one child, while another child faces tremendous suffering without her mother’s care. How can this be reconciled?

I have to come back to that point where I recognize, definitively, that ‘my’ children really aren’t even mine. I remind myself that I am just their temporarily appointed guardian. I have many limitations and failures in that role, but it does no one any good for me to beat myself up about it. We can do absolutely everything right and still end up with damaged kids. We can do everything wrong, and end up with well-adjusted over-achievers...because, like everything else in life, it’s not all up to us. We do the best that we can, one day at a time, operating out of our own inadequacies and the baggage that’s been handed down to us. (And we’ve all got STUFF as a pastor friend liked to remind his congregation.) Imperfect people give birth to imperfect people who give birth to imperfect people...

So we cannot love perfectly. We cannot protect our children from every harm. Sometimes, we can’t even protect them from ourselves.

But we can start learning to let go.

We can try to trust the one who made them for Himself, who knew them before we did.

I am going to start trying now.

(...He'll have to help me.)