We have children for many reasons. For some, it is just what you do. For some, it is an inner desire. For some it is to create a new being out of your love with another person. For some it is to bring joy to our lives. And for some … it just happened.
Once we do have our own children, whatever reasons we had for having them need to disappear, as their desires and wants need to forever trump our own, for the rest of their lives.
The following video shows a clip of a famous (at least Youtube famous) story about two young and impulsive men who purchased a lion cub from Harrods of London many years ago. It tells of how they cared for him, and that the life they gave the cub was, obvious in the video, a joy filled experience. Their decision to raise a lion cub was quite an enormous responsibility, one that they (like us in our quest to have a child), perhaps, had not understood fully when they made that decision.
Now tell me animals do not form bonds, and do not express emotion! What a beautiful reunion of the lion who was chosen raised and saved by the two men who chose to raise, and then let go of the cub, for his own good. Really it was in their letting go of their lion that gave Christian life as he was intended to have it.
Often, as parents, we have a plan for the lives of our children, from even before they are conceived. We hope for their future, we try to protect them from harm, we lead them in directions that we deem best for them. I do believe that the intentions of most of us as parents are pure and good. But, we can be living vicariously through our kids. Or, maybe our kids are hindered to progress in their own lives, because we neglect to let them go.
It is in that letting go that avails us to beautiful reunions, when they chose to return and share with us, as parents, the joys and sorrows of their independent lives. The story of Christian the lion, and, more importantly, the men who purchased him, tells of the joy of giving freedom to those we love.
It is a challenge to let go of our children. It is a challenge to not see them as our possessions … something we hold, and keep to ourselves. It is not a natural thing to let our children go off and live their lives independent of ourselves. But it is in granting that freedom that we allow them to have the greatest success, the greatest freedom to be who they were created to be.
In a second, and last visit of John and Ace to Christian, in Kenya, they reflected on how far ‘their’ lion had come, “he was no longer dependent on any of us, and that was the most wonderful success … John and Ace are convinced that they did the right thing, giving him back his freedom.”
“Point your kids in the right direction—
when they’re old they won’t be lost.”
Proverbs 22:6
itsawonderfilledlife 