The Love for Your Child: A Parable

Beats me why I'm so bad at this. You'd think it wouldn't be such a difficult thing to regularly update a blog...but at least I always justify it with some cliche' phrase like, "Such is life," or "It is what it is." Nothing like using a good cliche' to cause a public disruption and then utilizing it to make an escape.

So since we're discussing cliche's, I was talking the other day with someone about how you always hear that "kids change your life," and you blow it off until you have kids of your own and really do realize that your life was a meandering, pointless shadow until they came along. And it's not something you can explain to the child-less; the closest I can come is with the following example:

Please take what you're about to read with a grain of salt. It is, after all, just a parable. Eh-hem. Think of the most terrible, horrifying, gory experience you can possibly imagine. The one you won't ever let yourself think about; the one that you are convinced is Thee Worst Possible Way To Die. For me it is to be buried alive, but use your own imagination. Now don't confuse what I'm about to tell you with "sacrificial love." Sacrificial love is this: when given the option of either you or someone you love having to endure this fate, it concludes with you pondering, sweating, and either a.) guiltily letting your loved one go and then killing yourself, or b.) humbly, heroically and terrifyingly taking the plunge to save Loved One. Either way, you wonder if you're making the right decision and you're terrified either way (unless you're Jesus - which you're not - about to be crucified).

Now, let's toss kids into this equation. If given the choice of either myself or my child enduring this fate, I would burst into gregarious laughter and swan dive into that casket. I would help them dig the hole, and hold the lid down while they nailed it shut. I wouldn't even bat an eyelash.

Obviously, this is all theoretical and not the conventional way to describe the love of a child. But it does go beyond scribbly hearts with wings fluttering around.

It's interesting how, when it comes to those on whom you depend vs. those who depend upon you, you'd think it would hurt more to lose the one you depend upon. But it's actually the other way around. The instinct of the depender, maybe? This is all theory, and by the grace of God, I pray it remains theory. But I know that for those that have experienced such a loss first hand can try explaining to me the peace that surpasses all understanding. And me, in my simplified mind, will ask them to speak in one-dimensioned parables.