{This is a re-post from last year. This year I am with the kids and my parents at my aunt’s lake house in New Braunfels with family – swimming, talking, playing, relaxing, eating, having lots of fun while poor Dustin is working. He began his 4-year Gyn-Onc fellowship on Monday, and worked 30 hours in 2 days, plus many phone consults interrupting his little sleep. He is certainly not feeling very “free” these days.}
Happy 4th of July to all of you! I hope you will get to spend some good quality “slow” time with family and friends this weekend. Some of our favorite traditions: making fruit pizza, count American flags, neighborhood parade, catching lightning bugs at dusk, a popsicle walk followed by a backyard spray-chase, hanging up the flag, saying the Pledge of Allegiance, and singing the “Star-Spangled Banner” followed by “America” (which is much easier and catchier for kids and grown-ups, and some might argue should be the national anthem, but I digress…)
Now that my son is getting older (4), I was just thinking about how to celebrate and talk about this concept of “freedom” with my children. After all, isn’t that what we are celebrating on Independence Day?
Of course, telling kids that because we are lucky enough to be Americans, it means we are free to do what we want to do, live how we want to live, and believe what we want to believe could lead to even more power struggles in the house, so I don’t think I’ll take that approach! (“But Mommy, I’m an American so I don’t have to do what you say!…I don’t believe in washing my hands after I poop.”) Not really the point of this elusive concept “freedom”, but what exactly is the point? A lot of Americans do tend to live as if “freedom” means “entitlement” – to money, nice things, nice lifestyle, nice car, etc…
I think “freedom” describes the ideal that we should be striving for together in our country – to make the kind of land where all people are free to be themselves: free to be a working mom with a fair salary and reasonable maternity leave, free to be a stay-at-home mom with a Masters degree, free to be a gay mom with another mom as your parenting partner, free to be a single mom trusting in good quality affordable childcare, free to be an immigrant mom getting paid fair wages to support her family, with time leftover for her family, free to be the mom of a child with skin of a different color, free to be an ex-addict or ex-con mom with a decent shot at a second chance, free to be the daughter of any of these moms striving for excellence in public school, powered by a healthy school lunch, caring teachers, and a society that believes SHE CAN DO IT! Since becoming a mom myself, I have felt much more connection and empathy to the plight of moms everywhere, and certainly feel like we should be helping each other out more and judging each other less, for the sake of our kids and America’s future, if nothing else. (I know…sounds like Rosie the Riveter here, leading up to my presidential campaign announcement – definitely don’t have time for that between teaching pre-schoolers about “crescendos”, keeping my kids’ misbehavior from “crescendo-ing” in public places, and blogging about all of it!)
Just because I’m a busy mom doesn’t mean I can’t think or vote about important issues like “FREEDOM”! I am reminded of a sermon my good friend and mentor Pastor Jack once gave about the phrase, “I’m blessed”. Most people use this as an adjective to describe their state of being. It has the tendency to sound quite trite, though people can believe and feel deeply “blessed.” Jack deepened its significance for me, saying that “being blessed”, in its truest form, is much more than just a passive recognition of circumstances, but a call to action in life: If God has blessed you, is blessing you, then you feel compelled to bless others in return – this is the natural, spiritual response. Just think of all the action words in the famous “Beatitudes”: “Blessed are they who show mercy…Blessed are they who seek peace...” It seems the same to me with “freedom” – in feeling it, we feel moved to pass it on to others. (And I don’t mean through war.)
What I know for sure is…like with so many values, we start in our homes with our own children. Not by giving them the “freedom” to choose their own bedtime, or to stop eating cookies when they’re “full”, but by allowing them to truly be themselves. To recognize their inner lights, and send them out into the world to shine those lights, making the world a better and brighter place in their own unique ways. You don’t have to go so far as to conceal your next-born’s gender (as you may have heard a recent American couple did – copying a Canadian couple from the 70′s in an effort to prevent gender stereotyping as their child is developing his (or her) own identity) …fascinating though a bit impractical, I think. But, passing along this “freedom” to your children means you are intentional about the way you speak about them in front of others, and about the way you speak of others in front of them. You are intentional about noticing and naming their gifts and interests, and encouraging them. (Maybe even allowing them to wear 2 different shoes – see Ellie’s picnic pic.) Passing “freedom” along means you find ways to reach out to other children and mothers in your community, and you tell your children that you believe all children deserve to be safe and loved. Maybe this means you go together to donate clothes or food to a shelter, or books to a neighborhood school. It is only by getting the basic needs of children met that they can then be truly free to become who God created them to be. It is only by meeting the basic needs of children and mothers in our country that we can have true “freedom” to be the best America we can be. God “Bless” America…
“There’s a land that I see where the children are free.
And I say it ain’t far to this land, where we are.
Every boy in this land grows to be his own man.
In this land every girl grows to be her own woman.
Take my hand, come with me where the children are free
Come with me , take my hand…and we’ll run…
To a land where the river runs free,
To a land through a green country,
To a land with a shining sea,
To a land where the children are free,
And you and me are free to be you and me.”
(Lyrics by Bruce Hart, written for the children of America in 1972)
MJ recommends that you buy the version that comes with the CD. MJ says, “What I like about this book is the songs and the pictures on the front and inside, and the poems.”
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