Korn Kernels On Mother’s Day
Sunday morning, 8:45 a.m. Mother’s Day. Pentecost. I’m driving myself, my daughter and my son to church. And – though I can’t say for sure – I’m probably the only pastor around who’s driving to church while listening to Korn.
Now, to be sure, Korn is not my favorite. Not even close. But anytime my middle-school daughter chooses to open a window and share part of her world with me – “Mommy, can we listen to my iPod?” – I’m certainly not going to shut it. I listen to daughter’s music collection with ears open and mouth shut, for in this day and age, it’s not the eye, but the iPod, that’s the window to the soul.
So – while son bipped happily along to more suitable music on his own earphones – I listened with my daughter to Korn. And Linkin Park. And other songs that rocked loud and hard in minor keys with moody lyrics.
Daughter’s current tastes in music run a sharp, dark counterpoint to her likeable sunny nature. And this is no surprise to me. She is at the age and stage where she must meet and come to terms with her shadow-self. And I, her Mother, who’s been there and done that, must come to terms with the fact that my experience is only worth so much. She’s got to “be there and do that” for herself. I can help her, guide her, advise her to a point, and I can be the fence when she’s too close to the edge…but, as a sage soul once told me, “There’s a part of your children that you can never touch.” Watching her profile, as she sinks deep into the music, I remember those words all too well.
Even in my son, five years daughter’s junior, I catch a glimpse of that now and again. When he’s riding in the van, eyes turned out the window, staring at something a million miles away….I wonder, “Who is this being? What’s he all about?” -His face looks older then; I catch just a glimpse of what he’s on his way to being – at some future point when Dad and I will have very different roles in his life, roles much reduced.
Parents exist to eventually put themselves out of business. Of course, you’re never completely out to pasture – adult children have problems, there are grandchildren and great-grandchildren to worry about…. but the day comes, or should, when the kids can fix their own lunch, do their own laundry, pay their own bills….and most important of all, make their own decisions. There comes a day when ‘because I said so’ doesn’t cut it anymore. She’ll do what she’ll do because she said so. Son will do the same.
I hope, as Dad hopes, I pray, as Dad prays, that they will grow “in wisdom and in stature, in favor with God and humanity”. We hope their lives will be reflections of a much higher and holy Father and Mother – the One Dad and I try our best to show them. We can never know for sure how it’s all going to turn out. That’s the kicker about childrearing. We just can never know.
But we’re halfway to church now, and I’m getting a bit of an inkling. Because after the shadow stuff, daughter’s showing me the rest of what’s on her iPod, and they are songs of hope, songs of integrity, songs of strength in Christ. She has a lot more of those, and she added them more recently. I smile. Girl’s headed, right now, in the right direction. Happy Mother’s Day.
Mad God Woman
