Updated December 29, 2009
 www.lovecounts.net

December 1, 1999

Dear Son,

I can hear the frustration, anger and hurt in your note and I understand very well where it is coming from.  But I’m glad you are sharing it with me because it gives me an opportunity to share with you what I have learned, after many years, about the relationship between children and their parents – no matter how old the children are.

I am quite sure that when you look at Daniel, as I looked at you when you were born, that you see and feel the awesome responsibility (and opportunity) to mould this little piece of soft clay to become a wonderful human being.  But have you ever stopped to think what that little one and the girls see when they look at their parents?

They see gods who provide everything, can do anything, and who could not possibly do anything really wrong or bad for the simple fact that in their universe you are perfect and wonderful.  If you take a moment to look at your own feelings toward God, you will see what I mean.

The view a baby or young child have of their parents is so deeply imbedded that it goes far beyond thought or even feeling.  It is something they just know without question.  Each of us, as babies, attach expectations and assumptions to our parents that we attach to no other.

This is the reason why, as we grow up, our parents, more than any other human being in our life, have the ability to both crush and disappoint us.  We cannot accept, at our most basic level, that our gods are less than perfect.  It is why we are less tolerant, less forgiving, less accepting (but never less loving) toward our parents than any other mere mortal.

Son, I am sharing these thoughts with you as an aid to help you with your feelings toward your dad, but also to help in your relationship with your own children.  You and Dee are just about perfect parents.  You give your children the intention and attention that you did not get enough of as a child.  The downside to your wonderful parenting abilities is that you have farther to fall from the pedestal.  There will come a time when the children see you as less then perfect and they will feel the same disappointment you feel toward your dad, and me.  You will not be able to prevent this.  It is part of the growing process.  However, you may be able to soften it a bit by teaching the children at an early age what I am saying to you here.  Let them know clearly that there is another God who is perfect and all-loving, but that you and Dee are humans and subject to mistakes, weaknesses and failings.  Tell them that the important thing is to see beyond these things and to know, that no matter what, they are loved by you and Dee.  It is a given that they will love you anyway.  They just need to be told over and over by their gods that they will always be loved anyway.

About Christmas:  You have me clapping my hands in approval.  I think it would be wonderful for you and the girls to demonstrate the spirit of Christmas by helping in a ‘hands-on” way.  The girls are not too young to experience the other side of life.  They will appreciate so much more what they have by being given the opportunity to see how many people ‘don’t have’.

I just spoke to Ollie.  What a wonderful example he is of what human beings are capable of.  He has cancer of the liver; his restaurant should have closed months ago, the list goes on.  And yet he is on the top of the world.   He has found his center-point of faith and it is carrying him through.  I am so very happy for him – what a good and beautiful man he is!

On a personal note I am going to Ucluelet on the 11th to buy a car, which is a very good thing because it will afford me freedom to come and go that I don’t have now.

In closing I want to pass this on to you.  Never forget that our God is a good and wonderful and loving God.  If there are times that we think differently it is because we project on Him our own inadequacies.

I love you, Son – but then I probably don’t really need to tell you that because you know it.

Mom