Sometimes people like me write about things that are happening in their lives. This is not one of those times. My mind goes off on tangents while watching TV or listening to people talk or even reading posts on FaceBook.
I do not even know how this train of thought got started. It may even have been a case of spontaneous thinking. You have seen, I am sure, the cartoons where the light bulb goes off. This was not that kind of experience. It was more like a smoldering ember that suddenly caught fire.
I see the celebrity news reports where breakups are as common as rehab visits. School children, even in our small country town, get on the bus at several different homes within the same week. Mom, or Dad moves out, finds true love, divorces, moves out, shacks up, finds true love and the cycle continues.
And, why? To be happy. "I deserve to be happy!" Who said so? Happiness is not guaranteed. It is not a given, just because one draws a breath. We strive for the unattainable when we should be content wherein we are whether it be plenty or poverty.
Parents used to stay together because it was the right thing to do. They worked through their problems or at least learned to live with them. Then, they stayed together "for the sake of the children" yearning for the day when the children would leave home. They neither enjoyed their life nor their children. Now, it seems that a person's happiness is paramount. To Hell with the marriage. To Hell with the children. I have to be happy.
We are a selfish lot today. We put our happiness our feel good above the care and feeding of the family. Family is filled with sacrifice. Kids are needy little buggers. They require your attention 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Yet we try to run away at the first sign of giving our all.
GOD built us to raise children. HE gave us the ability to give all in order to raise the next generation.
So, what in the world has happened? That's easy to answer. We have succumbed to the notions that the world promotes. Family is meaningless. Children are resilient and can overcome anything that happens to them without benefit of proper parenting. It does not matter who raises a child nor what values they give them when they raise them.
It is like planting corn. You can plant it, water it and watch it grow while you water it and watch it grow. When required, feed it. Keep the bugs away from it. Tend it until it is mature and ready to leave the stalk.
Or, you can throw the seed on the ground, leave it to grow on its own and go back when it is supposed to be matured and try to collect a good harvest. If the weeds, the floods, the drought or the bugs have not killed it out, you might find a few ears here and there that are fit for harvest, but more likely you will find a ruined crop.
When parents complain about how their children have turned out and I know that they did not attend to their needs like they should have, I wonder why they cannot see that they are getting out of it what they put into it.
I was not around for my own child when he was growing up. After I put myself, my needs first, I realized that it was wrong, but by then it was too late to turn things around.
That is why I feel it necessary to let people know that you must raise your child to become an adult, not to be a trophy for your failed life, nor just another cross for you to bear. Our children are our hope and oftentimes we treat them as less than the garbage we set on the curb.
If you are thinking about leaving your spouse, think again. If you are unhappy, is it not just as much your fault as your spouse's? It might even be more your fault. Unless he or she is beating you to a bloody pulp every day, dealing drugs or engaged in other illegal activities there is no good reason to leave. Even adultery can be overcome and forgiven.
If you are just shacking up stop it. That is just plain stupid. Been there. Done that. Know what it is. It is just plain stupid.
Shalom. Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem.
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