Tag: iron sharpens iron

Sisyphus

If you’re not familiar with the name “Sisyphus,” you’re certainly familiar with his plight. In ancient Greek mythology, this ill-fated individual was punished by Hades for twice cheating death with the task of endlessly rolling a boulder up a hill only, through enchantment, for it to tumble back down to the bottom mere inches from reaching the apex. It’s an apt metaphor for any task that seems or is, in fact, ultimately futile or pointless, as in a “Sisyphean” effort.

Matthaus Loder, Sisyphus engraving, 1st half of the 19th century, engraved by Friedrich John

Now, I’m what’s called a “stay-at-home dad.” I am not a fan of this term, however. If you use it to describe me during the first conversation you and I may be having after you ask me what I do, and I characteristically respond that “I take care of the house/kids,” I’m likely to correct you with, “Well, there isn’t necessarily a lot of ‘staying at home.’” You would courteously laugh or smile, and I, and perhaps even you, subconsciously, wouldn’t be sure if I had lost a little of your respect. Yes, it’s a brave new world of redefined gender roles, but there still lingers with some of us out there the idea that men are the breadwinners and women are the caregivers, even if we don’t announce it openly.

That nasty little year that was 2020 altered the landscape of work location, among many things. Those of us who only needed a computer, a chair, and a WiFi connection to do our jobs, to be fair, did not suddenly become “stay-at-home” engineers, “stay-at-home” teachers, or “stay-at-home” stockbrokers, though they probably should have. Enveloped within the term is the mental image, if we’re brutally honest, of said individual literally sitting around, idling away at home. And I know of few “stay-at-home” parents who do much sitting around. So, I say, let’s get rid of the term and its implications entirely for something more fitting. I’m partial to something along the lines of “pro-bono caregiver.”

I digress. We were discussing futility, as I recall.

Of the many tasks of a parent, instilling good habits in our children requires the utmost patience and persistence. The earlier you start, the better. Usually. Maybe. I think I read that somewhere. Anyway, this can be a special challenge with children who have been adopted in later years, but it isn’t necessarily impossible.

“Clean your room.” This one has been as constant as it gets, inspiring in recent years eye-rolls or grunts of exasperation at our nagging. My own parents did a pretty good job with my siblings and me. We still make our beds and prefer to have personal things each in their orderly and designated locations, and I’ve tried my best to do the same with ours, but often, at the end of the day, observing a mess that has experienced a miraculous rebirth only an hour since its extinction, I think of the ancient king of Ephyra, pause for a moment of silence, and share his pain.

I feel you Sisyphus. I feel you.

Our son could often be described as an ADHD-fueled comic whirlwind surfing on a sprinkled-donut across a rainbow, and it wouldn’t surprise us if he one day gives the late, great Robin Williams a run for his money. He has a very sweet, loving, and generous disposition when he isn’t bouncing like a pinball off the walls, ceiling, minivan interior, whatever, but, God help him, for all his endearing qualities, he can’t keep a clean room to save his life. He is also a “collector” (my wife prefers the term “hoarder”), and decluttering can cause an emotional reaction, so to speak. We have in the past “freed” select items surreptitiously and in small, inconspicuous doses, as if cat burglars who toss rather than keep their stolen trophies. Such secret missions have been a success, for the most part, but the mess still returns minutes later.

I’m convinced I could handily persuade FEMA to provide us emergency assistance. It’s often a disaster, by my observation, and his middle sister isn’t much better, though she is periodically inspired to purge with much stopping and starting over, say, several months. With her, random items of unknown function or purpose may wash up in clusters around the rest of the house as if carried by the tides. In recent days, the reality of the endlessly returning chaos of things hit me like Sisyphus, and I’ve consequently almost begun to overlook it, as parents learn to ignore the noise of children, though not without a sense of complete despair of ever helping them care about or notice the mess they create.

My wife recently returned from a trip with our oldest while I was away on a trip with our middle after dropping off our youngest for trip with his grandfather (Yes, our summers can be a bit much; then again, so is the school year). While all were away, she was inspired to tackle his room before overnight guests arrived and found, after two-hours, she had barely scratched the surface. Undaunted, she planned on regrouping and plunging in once again after an 8-hour work day to address how to clean it up. “Have you tried a good, strong, weapons-grade blowtorch?” I thought to myself. She had her own strategy, and, she decidedly pointed out, after I shared my despondency over any change in our children or interest in it, that we just have to keep after them, plain and simple.

If there is an optimist and a pessimist in every relationship, I think you can intuit where each of us land. It isn’t difficult to work it out. I can get stuck in a muddy rut of negative thoughts if I’m not careful with my head. And after our phone call, I found my thoughts shifting from my despairing attitude regarding our children’s poor organizational habits to one of the many purposes of marriage.

We recently attended Pine Cove family camp, as we have for six years now. It’s a priceless experience for innumerable reasons, all of which I can’t share here, but one of the opportunities we had this year was to publicly share what you appreciate about your spouse. I selected hers easily with little consideration and happily offered it to the audience, interrupting another couple in the process.

My wife seeks out challenges, as I stated. She doesn’t shy away from them or rest long on her laurels. On to the next. I, on the other hand, while characteristically an achiever, often need a nudge out the door, but then I’m off and running. I can lose steam, however, as many of us can, and especially lately, I’ve learned, when it comes to the never-ending job of full-time parenting kids who don’t yet see the importance of good, lifelong habits. You can’t give up, and she doesn’t. I often want to, though, and I certainly would if she wasn’t my partner.

Marriage has many functions and purposes, and different couples likely emphasize certain of them more than others. But chief among them isn’t, I would argue, fun, or sex, or happiness, or whatever. The leisure-saturated world around us suggests that those options are in the running. No, I think marriage, companionship aside, does its best when it encourages us to be better persons. Iron sharpens iron, as Scripture reads. We wed for many reasons, but I believe marriage makes us better images of God overall. He fashioned a “helper” for Adam, and so they learned to help each other. Help makes us grateful, improves us and our circumstances, inspires us to love. It changes us, in short, to be better, to do better.

I don’t know where you think you’d be without your partner, but I know I would remain in a funk forever were I doing this job alone. God forgive me when I’m determined to stay there in spite of her efforts. I’m not one to alter a meaningful myth, but if Sisyphus had a partner to help him push, he stood a much better chance to overcome. And if not, they at least would have each other to appreciate the shared struggle.

Choosing Well

“He chose . . . poorly.”

You know the scene. “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” — arguably, the last great Indy movie that rounded out a fine, adventurous trilogy, and should have, in the opinion of the masses, marked the end of the franchise. In any event, our hero’s foil, Walter Donovan, forces at gunpoint Indy and his former love interest, the duplicitous Elsa, to choose for him in a dank cavern from innumerable chalices which of them is the Holy Grail — the storied sacred cup of Christ. Elsa randomly selects one of ornate design, foretelling in her subtle expression to the viewer and to Indy alone what the Templar knight standing by would declare above after Donovan, slaking a selfish thirst for immortality, drinks from the false cup and shrivels to dust in a matter of seconds.

His enemy vanquished in dramatic and grotesque fashion, Indy returns to the task at hand, scans the collection and reaches for an unadorned artifact of common appearance, concealed in plain sight amongst the glitter and gold. “That’s the cup of a carpenter,” he says to himself. He dips it into the basin, swallows the contents, and apprehensively looks to the knight, anticipating his patient pronouncement: “You chose . . . wisely.”

Driving our second to her first day of middle school, this scene came to mind. It might not have if the previous evening’s eager excitement had not given way to tearful anxiety that morning due to insurmountable worries she felt. The plan was to ride the bus, but it had come and gone and here we were, mom and dad tag-teaming to settle frazzled nerves and work the problem. All was well, for the most part, by the time she and I hopped in the van, and off we went.

I found myself on the way with the rare opportunity to offer first-day fatherly advice. It was an honest attempt to perpetuate calm, though my wife informed me after I shared later with her what I had to say that I probably could have skipped a few pressure-laced points. No matter; she took it well, I remarked. As to her concern about a close friend or two with an entirely different schedule, I shared that, though she’d still see them, here was a fresh opportunity to make new friends. “But choose them well,” I left her with as she hopped out, recalling the scene and observing that I hadn’t always followed this advice.

It’s a dilemma as a parent. We want them to have friends; we all need them. But age and experience have taught us about the pitfalls associated with the wrong associations, so to speak, and there comes a time when we simply can’t control or be present for every interaction or connection they make at school or elsewhere. We can either monitor them mercilessly, compelling them to pull away as we fearfully attempt to keep them safe, or let them go and hope and pray our messages have sunk deep into their brains, ready to recall and act upon when the most critical moments arrive.

My own parents knew this, and, from my perspective, granted my siblings and me just enough space to socialize with those we picked. They trusted us, or believed we would approach them when we made mistakes. I don’t know how the added layer of social media and technology might have changed their approach, but I had friends, though I hadn’t always chosen them well.

In hindsight, I don’t know that I actively made friends in public school as much as others made friends of me. A close, observant college friend of mine once described me as neither leader nor follower. This seemed to hold true in middle school/junior high, one of the few times I’ve harbored a bit of regret for drifting into the circle that I did.

I can still remember stepping into my new friend’s house. It was a revelation into the parenting practices of others, or lack thereof, if we’re honest. On the spectrum of liberality in parenting, there is “turning a blind eye” to your kids, and then there is blatant permissiveness. With the former, they may at least make an effort to hide their misdeeds. I got a literal eyeful of the latter, however, when I visited his home. His interests as a young teen boy were on full display, from the “art” adorning the walls to the “literature” scattered about. His bedroom did not even remotely resemble mine, and unless mom routinely entered blindfolded, it was clear she was the permissive type, who either relinquished her duties as a parent or believed in little or no boundaries.

I don’t know how long our friendship transpired, but there were further visits and even sleepovers. I never shared with my own parents about the “education” I was receiving until there came a moment after a visit when guilt overwhelmed me to the point that I confessed tearfully to them about all I had willingly viewed and participated in. I don’t remember being punished, but I do believe there was consensus that the visits were at an end.

30 years since, and I still believe this relationship did more lasting harm than good. I can’t blame my parents, who did their best. I was trusted to make my own choices, and I chose to be influenced rather than an influencer. Fortunately, their lessons ultimately won the day, and they supportively forgave me and helped me move on a little wiser. Though they couldn’t be present for every moment I might be tested, their influence and modeling plugged in the gaps.

Unless your child is a complete recluse or is clinically anti-social, they’re going to make friends. That they will have friends is seldom the worry of most parents. Rather, it’s the quality of their friendships that can either set our minds at ease or our teeth on edge. In just five-years of jump-started (i.e., adoptive) parenting, we’ve dealt with both and have had to respond accordingly.

It didn’t take long, though, to discover that the trouble doesn’t always stem with friends, per se, but, as we discovered, with the overly-permissive parents of chosen friends, especially in the area of media. My wife and I have found ourselves astounded at the lack of almost every restriction our kids inform us is on this or that friend’s personal device. The content available at their fingertips amazes me, and we find we’re fighting a battle not with our kids, who confuse “mature” content with actual maturity in their eagerness to be treated like a grown-up, but with the allowances of other parents.

We each make our own decisions about our kids. What I will or will not allow may differ from the standards for yours. But having no standards whatsoever where there should be, as much as our kids may think is the measure of a “cool” parent, won’t help them in the long-run learn the virtue of discernment and will leave them guessing about how to make a critical decision on basic rights and wrongs in a world that often seems to leave those topics up to personal preference. Entertainment is not merely entertainment in a young mind that hasn’t yet learned to discern.

The friend I mentioned grew up like the rest of us, and I lost touch. I’ve gleaned what I could about his life now in the present. From my limited vantage point, he’s certainly alive and kicking and appears to be moving along in life, but he’s had his share of problems, some mental, and it’s difficult not to take a cursory glance and observe that he isn’t a strong candidate exemplifying the phrase “living your best life.” Rather, from my admittedly incomplete perspective, his is a lonely and self-centered life. It’s not for me to judge whether or not the parenting he did/did not receive contributed to his current state, but you’d have a tough time defending any benefits.

“As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.”

Hopefully we learn as we mature that it’s friends who not merely lighten our mood but who improve us, as this verse notes, who ought to be chosen and cherished. I pray our kids learn this, though they’ll make their share of missteps. Moreover, I hope they can learn to be this kind of friend.

At the end of the day, stepping off the bus after the return trip, she replied to my question as to how it all went with the terse but acceptable judgement of “good.” From a kid that is sometimes bent more like Eeyore than Tigger (our youngest), it was a win. No word on new friends yet, but the best things take time. Until then, we hope and pray they all follow the wisdom of my father-in-law, whose advice for a long and happy marriage applies no less to long and happy friendships: “Choose well.”