I Taught You How to Walk

Hosea 11:1-11

“I Taught You How to Walk”

 

I can never remember a moment I did not love my children. Granted, David and Martina are now both grown. Each has their own family which includes that wonderful component call grandchildren.  So you might accuse me of romantically claiming the parenting adventure was one joy filled journey with only great memories. But you would be wrong. I always have and always will love my children. But there were times they nearly broke my heart.

I still remember the first night we expelled Martina from our bedroom. The first thing every perspective mother and father does is read a book on parenting. It doesn’t matter if the author knows what he is talking about. We make our choice and claim those words to be holy. Our canon of enlightenment proclaimed that within a month of coming home the child must be given her own space at night. I think this was written by some guy who was jealous of the creature that had invaded his bedroom. None-the-less we, the faithful followers of the parenting guru sentenced Martina to a night alone in her new room. She wailed long and hard. Deb and I sat huddled just outside her door reminding each other that giving into her cries would begin our downfall as responsible parents.   We lost sleep. Martina learned independence, a trait she never relinquished.

David always went to bed without a problem. He played hard and slept hard. But no matter what we did David woke up promptly at 2:30 and he woke up angry. Only a bottle would quiet his demons. Sometimes David was so enraged he wouldn’t even take the bottle. I would pick him up, take him to the den, turn on the TV, and watch the TBS reruns of the Atlanta Braves baseball game. It took desperate measures by Deb to break both of us of that nightly habit.

Parenting is hard. I once asked my one year old daughter to please tell me what she wanted. Once she learned to talk, I swear her first word was “Why?”

Why do I have to eat vegetables?

Why do I have to go to school?

Why do I have to get up?

Why do I have to go to church?

Why do I have to wear socks that match?

Why? Why? Why?

 

I once made the mistake of responding, “Mommy and Daddy know what is best for you.” Neither of my children bought that explanation. We encouraged them to be free thinkers and they didn’t think much of what we thought.

But we did do a couple of things right. We allowed them to fail hoping they would learn from their failures. By doing this we discovered was how different our children were. Failure for Martina was the end of the world. We endured her pain. Failure for David was just permission to take the road less traveled. Sometimes he scared us to death.

We had and still have creative, intelligent, caring, and healthy kids. They never got into drugs or alcohol. They excelled in school, played sports, volunteered regularly at soup kitchens and our local Aids Foundation.   They were independent thinkers. If I said an intersection was dangerous they would build a tunnel to get to the other side. They wanted to learn life on their own. Until they were 21 Martina and David saw Deb and me as old-fashion and hopelessly set in our ways. They loved us, listened to us, respected us, but needed to choose their own path. Sometimes parenting was infuriating. So why did we keep doing it?                          We taught them how to walk.

For thousands of years humans have attempted to describe God. In the beginning God was best understood as the one in the storm. The storms were powerful, dangerous, unpredictable, yet they brought life-giving rain. Humans feared God because the showers of life could turn into the storms of death. As humans evolved so did their understanding of God. They began to speak of God’s personalities. Words like jealous, wrathful, all-powerful, demanding, even unfair entered the conversation. Then a Poet suggested God was caring, merciful, slow to anger, and steadfast in love. This was a radical thought, rejected by most, yet embraced by a wayward people trying to understand their pilgrimage from Egypt to The Promised Land to Babylon and finally back to Jerusalem. The Poet dared to ask, “How could God love us?”

The answer came in these words, “When Israel was a child I loved her. But the more I would call to Israel, the more she would turn to Baal. Yet how can I give her up. How can I let her die? I carried her in my arms. I lifted her to my breast and gave her milk. I taught her how to walk.”

Seminary exposed me to everything I would ever want to know about the doctrines of atonement, creation, incarnation, salvation and sin. But the poet from Hosea told me about God. In this marvelous book, God is described as a parent with memories that are both exuberant and painful. In Hosea, God shows anger and love, a broken heart and a spirit up lifted. Hosea gives us a God who understands separation, midnight feedings, tenderness, frustration and a desperate love which at any moment might be rejected.

I can remember more than once coming home in the evening and experiencing a self-righteous rant from my son or daughter. The topic hardly mattered. Deb and I were considered to be not only unreasonable but the worst parents in the history of the parenting. We knew the pain would pass by morning, but the sunrise was 12 hours away. The door would slam and the child would disappear into the safety of his or her room. I would look at Deb and ask why we signed up for this. And she would whisper, “We can’t give up. We taught them how to walk.”

Such is the love of God.

Amen.