More Than a Job
Posted on: May 12, 2016
- In: Everyday Life | Faith | Family | Parenting | Uncategorized
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At Mass on Sunday, the priest filling in for our pastor talked about Mother’s Day and about the fact that parenthood is a lifetime job—not something we can simply walk away from.
Makes it seems pretty daunting, doesn’t it? It should. Being a parent is more than a job.
Parenthood, like marriage, is something we shouldn’t enter into lightly. No matter how old our children are, we still want to protect and care for them just as we did when they were infants and we were their whole world. But the larger their world grows, the more we realize how limited our ability to protect and care for them really is.
My son and I after his Grade 8 graduation ceremony two years ago
I speak from experience. My son recently turned 16, and while we still play a guiding role in his life, his world is so much bigger than this house and the people in it.
We need to pray every day for guidance in being good role models for our children in our work, family, community and faith lives. For the courage to answer the hard questions they bring us and the resourcefulness to find the answers we lack. For the strength to model and instil in them values like honesty, integrity, empathy and compassion and to support them, whether or not we agree with their choices. For patience when they question our decisions and compassion when they make mistakes.
A tall order, it’s true, but one that God can fill through the Spirit.
Whether we’re married, divorced or single parents, we all need parenting resources to draw on. Instead of looking only to family and friends, parenting books or programs, and counsellors, I pray that we would also look to our heavenly Father and ask him to increase in us the spiritual gifts and the values we need to raise our children. May we remember these words of Jesus in Matthew 7:7-8*:
“Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.”
(*Scripture quote taken from the Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version, 2nd Catholic Edition.)
A Catholic Convert in Ottawa 