yesterday, when you were young
everything you needed done was done for you.
now you do it on your own
but you find you’re all alone,
what can you do?
Moonlight streams in the window behind me as I lie here in bed, propped up on a couple of pillows against the headboard. The fan hums and casts a soft draft from the other bedside table as my wife breathes gently beside me. The bright rectangle of the screen stabs into the darkness of the room laid out in front of me as my fingers tick gently over the keyboard.
I can’t remember any more what it was like to been free from responsibility. I used to know–there were weekends in particular, still spread out few and far between, when I had completed all my duties for the day, whether school- or home-related, and I had nothing to do. But even then, my mind wasn’t totally free; I knew there was something I should be doing, learning, reading, taking initiative about. I think this emotion follows most of us our entire lives; it’s what the psychologists like to call some form of primal guilt that we need to rid ourselves of, that we need to self-actualize our way out of. I’m not convinced.
Still, I look at my son in particular and marvel at his life. When he is finished with whatever activity occupies him at that moment, there is absolutely nothing weighing on his mind. Nothing at all. His days are filled with play and fun learning and interaction. And that’s how it should be. I think there’s something to be learned from that, something utterly childlike about his outlook on life at the moment that corresponds with an admonition in the Word to be childlike in our conscious dependence on His grace, common and saving. There’s a connection there, I’m convinced. Children are blessings to their parents in more ways than we know.