Your children are not your children

I finished putting up the Christmas decorations last night and found myself a little sad. My kids are grown now and no amount of ornaments or angels or twinkling lights can bring back those many joyful years of “making Christmas” for the children. But of all the things we did for them throughout the Advent season— the baking, the caroling, the viewing of insane displays of lights, the skating, the snow trips, the gathering of gifts for the homeless, the parties, the Advent calendars, the screenings of A Christmas Story, and later, Love, Actually— none was likely as important as the reminder that Kahlil Gibran gives us each day in his book The Prophet. Knowing this, believing this, is the greatest gift we’ve given Graham and Remy. May those of you with young children consider the wisdom found here….

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You many give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that his arrows
may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves the bow that is stable.

And with that we continue our journey to the manger
Heather