Last week I took Dixie to the vet for her annual vaccinations and a new vet was on rotation. We took the opportunity to get to know each other a bit, and as is typical, we ended up talking about our kids. His were considerably younger than mine, as in still teenagers. He was quite proud of his daughter’s achievements in cheer competition but was stressed, reasonably so, about a recent injury that had taken her out of competition for a while. I am not familiar about how the cheer thing works, but obviously you move from organization to organization as you get better and better over the years. She was at the top of her game! And after ten years of competing, this was her first injury…which might actually cost her team the top honors. It all seemed quite stressful for a fourteen year old!
When it was my turn to talk, I told him about my great niece and how she had opted out of drill team after a couple of years and went strictly with theater because there had simply been too much DRAMA in drill team!! Less drama in theater. Go figure!! She is having a blast!
I then told him about when my son had been a teenager, he had played football throughout junior and senior high school. Until the summer before his senior year when he told us that he wanted to quit football his VARSITY YEAR in order to be in theater the full year instead of just being able to be in the spring musical. I was hyperventilating! We were a football family!! His uncle had played in college and professionally. I had watched football since I was nine! I had a secret dream of being the first woman professional coach! (Has that been done and I just missed it?) But I took a deep breath and remembered that IT’S NOT ABOUT ME!! He had no plans to play ball in college, nor was he really exceptional. Just average. He had always completely enjoyed it and I enjoyed watching him. But he was done. He didn’t need this. His love was music and the arts. He wanted to be a Singing Cadet in college, not a football player! So I fully supported his decision (after accepting that I had ALREADY seen him suit up for the last time!), and he ended up getting a major role in every production during his senior year. He had a blast!! And I learned, or remembered, a very important lesson. It’s not about me!
Parents, that is a lesson that is important to learn right after you bring them home from the hospital! Perhaps before you ever leave!! It is one that you will need to embrace thousands of times throughout the lives of your children. As I am typing this, I am smiling at how my children are now experiencing this with their own. Even still, sometimes we need to be reminded.
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
Jeremiah 29:11
“Train up a child in the way he should go:
and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”
Proverbs 22:6
“You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof,
for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.”
2 Timothy 3:14-17
No comments:
Post a Comment