Wednesday, March 25, 2009

God is a Musician

Life is his music.

What song are you?

Monday, March 9, 2009

Life is Hard

My child is six years old now. I don't know how this happened. He is an independent being with his own thoughts, likes, moods, colors and imprint on this world. It amazes me to watch and humbles me that I have so much influence over who he becomes. We got him a bike for his birthday. His favorite color: green. It is a beauty with sturdy training wheels, and we proudly purchased it from our local bicycle shop instead of Walmart. We spent twice as much as we should have but walked out feeling we had done our part for the economy, the local guy!

And he hates it. First time on, he immediately fell, terrified, looking at me like I am some sort of maniac for making him get on this dangerous contraption. Tears, meltdown. Second time on, trembling, wobbly, total frustration because the pedals are too hard to push, and especially because the lack of coordination means pushing backwards on them at least half the time, engaging the breaks. More tears. Third time on was pulling teeth. Only accomplished through bribery involving both chocolate and extra TV time. Same results, meltdown, tears, and a feeling of betrayal: Why am I doing this to him? It is so HARD! Um... Because it is fun! No it's not. Because it will be fun when you learn and it becomes easy and you gain independence! But I don't want to!

I don't want to say this was never a problem for me. I am sure somewhere along the way I encountered some seemingly impossible task that others wanted me to undertake for which I saw no virtue. These things happen, occasionally. But it gets to me. I can't help but boil under the surface with frustration, which leads to anger, which is definitely NOT the space to be in when trying to teach your kid to ride a bike. I stopped myself from saying no pain, no gain, but COME ON!!! Dude, life is HARD! Don't you know that yet? I learned to ride my bike with ONE LEG! Falling down never deterred me from anything! I was never just automatically good at anything! I remember wanting to learn how to shoot a basketball. It took me YEARS to get even close! But I never stopped trying. I have no idea why. I don't even like basketball. I just saw that other people could do it and I knew it was possible and I just wanted to be able to make it in... SOMETIMES!

I should not be surprised. This is nothing new with Little J. There are other recreational activities his fear has won over his desire to learn: swimming, ladders, fireman's poles, rope swings, sledding. He has a good healthy sense of danger. I should be happy. But I can't make myself come around, on principle. I think he thinks it should be easy. He doesn't want to try. Why should he? TV is easy. Video games are easy. No matter how many times Scooby-Doo narowly escapes the zombies, at the end of the show, there is a bad guy in cuffs and a torn zombie disguise on the ground. This infuriates me, mostly because I am not really interested in instilling a first hand sense of the hardness of life, so I am at a loss.

The children's sermon at church yesterday was timely. It was the story of Rick Allen, the drummer from Def Leppard. He was at the top of his game when he lost his left arm in an accident. He worked with a manufacturer to develop a drum kit for a one armed, two legged drummer, learned how to play it and continued his career as if nothing happened. Of course, the story is irrelevant to this situation for two reasons. First, as the passive listener, you come away feeling that sure, it might have been kind of hard for him, but not THAT hard. Afterall, he did do it. There just isn't any way to transfer that kind of experience using only language. Second, Little J is six years old. Let me illustrate:

After church I casually asked Little J what he thought of the story. He said the drummer must have turned in to some sort of zombie because he lost his arm and you can't live if you lose a body part, so he must be a zombie now. Too bad for him. Um... what about me then, am I a zombie? No, you're a Mommy! Um, yeah... Like I said, doesn't translate. But apparently Scooby-Doo does!
I've got my work cut out for me...