A Parent's Prayer
"May God grant us parents the patience and wisdom to guide our children."Every Sunday, a woman in my church--who just happens to sit right behind my family--says this prayer when members of the congregation are called upon to offer their own petitions. Sometimes, I've felt a bit of a sting at the words because I knew I was displaying neither as I angrily whispered for someone to get off the floor or to stop making paper airplanes out of the church bulletin (thank goodness no one ever threw one!).
In my mind, I knew her words weren't directed at me. The woman's child is grown now, and she has always smiled at the antics of my kids with the amused indulgence of a grandmother. Yet in my heart, I used to hear them as a rebuke. But over the years, perhaps as I developed a little of that wisdom, I have come to appreciate the simple beauty of this prayer on many levels.
First, it works for all parents. Those who don't believe in a higher power can simply turn it into an affirmation or goal. ("May I develop the patience and...")
And then, patience and wisdom, which are essential to parenting, go hand in hand; the strides we make in developing one feeds the other.
But it is the phrase "to guide our children" that has always struck me the most. She doesn't say "raise" our children. Guiding is really what we parents do. We cannot control our children's actions, only guide them. Whether it's toilet training or teaching about drugs and alcohol, it is the cumulative efforts of the explaining, demonstrating, lecturing, punishing, laughing and crying we do with our children (plus the occasional paper airplane confiscation) that guides them.
Heaven help us!
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Comments
This is really cute and I hear myself saying that little prayer everyday!