Reflection This Week
IT’S NOT EASY BEING SEVEN
The following is the conversation Madison Hoge had with her mother,
Stephanie, on Maddy’s seventh birthday.
Mom: “Maddy why do you look so sad? Aren't you excited it's your
birthday?” “Yeah, I am happy, but I don't want to be seven.” “Why
not?” Mom asked. “Cause I am no longer a 2, 4, or 6 number!” “What's
wrong with that, you don't want to be 6 forever do you?” Mom asked.
“No! But now I am no longer even!” Maddy said. Mom, trying not to
laugh, said, “No, you are right, you are now an odd number. But
that's okay, isn't it? When you were 5, that was an odd number too.
Right?” Maddy stomps her foot and says, “No! But then I was all on
one hand!” So, the point to the story, as Mom sees it, is: "It is
hard being seven, cause you are now odd and on two hands." And we
adults think we have it hard!
No matter how young or how old we are, there are always problems
that we must face. It does not matter what the problem or what the
age, those problems can seem overwhelming at the moment. What seems
silly to Mom and Dad is quite serious to a seven-year-old. What
weighs heavily on Mom or Dad is not even on a child’s radar screen.
Problems, in so very many ways, are relative. That, of course, does
not make them any less difficult to endure or any easier to resolve
no matter what our age.
As parents, certainly as Christians, while we may smile at the
issues our children think as serious when we know better, we need to
stifle the smile and treat the issue as if it were a serious
problem, which, for our child, it most certainly is. That is the
only way we can help them through this crisis in the child’s life.
It is only after we, both parent and child, have moved on and
survived the problem, that together we can look back and smile, but
not until then.
Yet, that is true at any age and for any problem, even the most
serious ones. Loss of job, loss of good health, marriage issues,
financial concerns, children gone astray are issues that we never
make light of when they happen to us and must not when they happen
to others. Just as others may not be able to help us resolve our
problems, so we may not be able to help them. Sometimes all we can
do is be with them as they deal with it.
Now being seven years old and having to use two hands to demonstrate
your age and not truly liking odd numbers is only a metaphor for now
having to deal with an arthritic hand that makes it impossible to do
one’s job and forces and early retirement. Again, it’s all relative
but it is still very, very real.
In this life we are all in this together. We cannot live our lives
for others nor can we take their problems from them and make them
ours. Each of us has to work our way through whatever comes our way.
When our daughters were struggling through their teenage years, as
all teenagers do, as we did, we struggled with them. We wished we
could have said something or done something to make those years less
painful for them and thus less painful for us, but we could not. All
we could do is be there for them even when they wouldn’t let us be
part of their lives or when they didn’t want us to be a part of
their lives – and they told us so, just as we in our day and in our
own way did and said to our parents.
Much of our life has to do with the ministry of presence: just being
there for the other. More often than not that is all we can do. As
we have learned, both from being present for others or others being
present for us, more often than not that is enough, whether for a
frustrated seven-year-old, an angry seventeen-year-old or simply an
old geezer. WJP
