Today's Daily Lesson is from Psalm 69:
4 More in number than the hairs of my head are those who hate me without cause; mighty are those who would destroy me, those who attack me with lies.
What I did not steal must I now restore?
14 Deliver me from sinking in the mire;
let me be delivered from my enemies and from the deep waters.
15 Let not the flood sweep over me,
or the deep swallow me up,
or the pit close its mouth over me.
The other night at the dinner table and without any provocation our seven-year-old daughter Gabby cast her head down and began to tear up. Without saying a word she got up from her chair and ran to her room. Irie and I both looked at each other; neither of us had a clue as to what happened.
When we finally got Gabby to talk she told us that she was crying because some kids at school had been mean to her. I asked if she was thinking of anything in particular. She said one day when school was still in, some of the kids told on her and said she took some candy from another kid. Gabby said she didn't take anything, but that the teacher believed her friends and not her.
As a parent, one of the most difficult things is watching your kid get hurt by the sheer meanness of other kids. But it is not just their meanness that I see hurting my daughter so deeply; it is also the deep and painful knowledge that life itself is cruel and unjust and often leaves us without a witness to speak on our behalf. It's not just that others are mean that hurts so much; it is the dawning awareness that life itself can be unfair. This is the moment of disillusion.
I think my challenge as a parent is to teach my kid to find, amidst the shifting grounds of her world, her own grounding in her own inner self. My hope is that she can learn not to be swallowed up by despair or overcome with anger; my hope is that she can overcome evil with good. My hope is that she can learn to bless and not curse, love and not hate, and pray and not lose heart. The world is shifting on my little girl; she must find the firm foundation within.
Awhile back I was talking with a friend who told me about a time when she was a little girl and she had been asked by a friend who was disabled to go and get her a cookie from the lunchroom. Children were only allowed one cookie and the woman in the lunchroom spotted my friend getting two and chastised her. She froze and could not find the voice to speak. She the told me she still struggles to find her voice amidst the world's injustice.
The world isn't just and certainly isn't fair. Now disillusioned of the idea that it ever was, we either shrink like violets or grow deep and mighty as oaks.
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