WE'VE ALL BEEN THERE

A while back before I retired a couple without their three children came by to drop off food for the food basket, and headed out the door. I asked them where they were going. The wife replied: “We're running away from home.” I laughed, and added, “And leaving no forwarding address either.”  They laughed. I've been there. Every parent has been. It isn’t easy being a parent. Parenting gives us sometimes the greatest of pleasures and sometimes the greatest of pains. Sometimes we would do it all over again and sometimes we would run like the wind. It depends on the day – and sometimes on the hour.

It almost always depends on the answer we give to our children when they ask for something: to go out tomorrow night even though we told them yesterday that they were grounded for a week; to stay out late even though it is a school night [“I’ll get up in the morning, I promise.”]; for a new outfit because they have nothing to wear [look in their closets]; or a new pair of shoes [to add to the ten pairs they already have].

     
When the answer is a calm and simple “No,” their typical response is: 1) “You don’t have to be so rude.” 2) “You don’t have to yell at me.”  3) “What’s the matter? Do you have an attitude problem?” 4) All of the above. It is no good to try to respond. It only makes the matter worse. The only thought that went through my mind back then was: I can’t wait until you get married and have children of your own. They now are! Revenge is sweet. 

Raising children is only one of the many challenges of life. For life itself is a challenge, a challenge to make it from day to day, one day at a time, a challenge to see if we can get through this day without some sort of pain, or at least with more pleasure than pain. We don’t always succeed. And when we don’t, I suspect the temptation is to try to escape by simply running away from it all.

           
The temptation doesn’t last very long, thankfully. But in those quiet moments when we have the opportunity to reflect on life and the pains and problems of life, we sometimes have to wonder why it has to be so painful at times. And the fact that no one escapes the pain is really no comfort when we are in the midst of our own. Knowing that another is in the same boat as we may be a consolation but it in no way takes away the present pain.

 

It does mean that I am never alone and that I never have to go it alone. I need others to help me through my moments of pain and others need me to help them through theirs – whatever the pain, however great or small or even trivial. Pain is always intensely personal. We can walk alongside someone in pain, along the same road, as we all do as parents, but we can never walk in their shoes. We can only be there for support.
          
When we gather as a worshiping community, we gather as a people in pain, people who suffer from the effects of our own sins, the sins of others, and from events and happenings that are entirely out of our control. We gather to receive the strength of the Eucharist to help us through our pain, and the strength that comes from the loving support of one another to walk that road where we’ve all been before and where we will be again. But we must walk the road together. It’s the only way.