An advocate

Our son just started Kindergarten this year and it has been rather eye-opening, or rather a reawakening to the things that are most important in the eyes of the prevailing culture.  For five years he's been at home and according to those prevailing standards, I've failed miserably as a mother.  He couldn't say the alphabet or tie his shoes or count beyond 12 when he started.  I've had calls from the speech pathologist because he occasionally uses the wrong pronoun (Heaven help us!).  He's been screened twice and they thought he should stay home another year.  But I sent him anyway, epic failure that they predicted.  He can now read, count to 100, does basic math and a hundred other things I didn't learn until much later in the process.  They misjudged him and his abilities, they based their decisions on what they could measure on a test or observe in five minutes of observation, it isn't their fault, it's the result of the system they use, but what would have happened to my little son if I hadn't been there to insist that he didn't fit in the box they wanted to put him in?  He needed an advocate, someone to have his back, someone who understands and loves him and acts in his best interests.

A lot of us don't have that advocate, someone who sees us for who we are rather than what we can do, someone who wants what is best for us and does the hard thing because it is best for us.  That's real love, hard love, not the mushy romantic stuff we see on TV or the 'give them what they want and do everything to make them happy' mentality that is much of modern grand-parenting.  But it's hard, it's hard on me and it's hard on my kids.  It would be so much easier to just go with the flow and do the easy thing and be nice and not ruffle feathers and make sure he's happy, or at least thinks he is.  That's what the grandparents do and the kids have a great time, but once they leave, everything falls apart.  They're tired, crabby, selfish, bored, and unreasonable; I really don't like who they turn into after such a visit: think Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide!  But you see it in many of the kids in my son's class, for whatever reason be it a broken family or lax parenting, many of those kids do great on the test but their lives are falling apart before they've even begun.  Then they grow up and life gets tough and nothing goes their way and they self destruct.  All because someone wouldn't or couldn't do the hard things.

Life isn't easy, happiness is a fleeting feeling, all of us struggle with loneliness, futility, and pain at some point if not all the time.  But we aren't alone.  There is Someone who loves us enough to do the hard things, He did the Hardest Thing, for the people who least deserved it.  No matter what our earthly parents were like, we have a Heavenly Father who is willing to do the hard things, who loves us enough to insist upon it.  But we don't like it, we want everything to be easy and happy and carefree, but that isn't how life works, He loves us too much to let us destroy ourselves thus.  Just as we initially resented our parents' efforts and our kids resist ours, so too do we call Him officious, judgmental, and the like, but like all good parents, He presses on through the protests, tantrums, and rages and waits patiently on the porch for His erring children to finally decide they've had enough and do the sensible thing and come Home.