{"id":643,"date":"2008-05-19T23:30:49","date_gmt":"2008-05-19T23:30:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2008\/05\/beating-heart.html"},"modified":"2008-05-19T23:30:49","modified_gmt":"2008-05-19T23:30:49","slug":"beating-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/05\/beating-heart.html","title":{"rendered":"Beating Heart"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the experts talk about parents and children, they talk a lot about separation, about the child’s gradual distinction of the self from the parent.
\nWhat they don’t talk about as much is the parent’s gradual distinction of the self from the child.
\nThis is something I think and talk about a lot. I’ve always thought that the core of good parenting involves respecting one’s child as a child of God – as a brother or sister in Christ. Too often, even the most well-meaning of parents speak of the value of having children involving things like “fulfillment” or “brining me joy.”
\nWell, children do all of those things, but none of that is a reason to have children, because all of those reasons ultimately revolve around me and my desires and needs.
\nIt is a huge leap – to get to the point at which you realize – and not just intellectually – that your child is not you. At all.<\/em>\u00a0 If you find yourself resisting this, I’ve always found it helpful to consider the question, “Am I <\/em>my parents? Do I want them valuing me to the extent that I reflect their identities?” Probably not. And it’s no different for my children.
\nIt’s something that I never really got until my older children (my oldest will be 26 in September. Lord.) started leaving home and doing their own thing – which is hardly ever my thing. Having that experience of older children really changes the way you parent the younger ones, I think. It leads to an odd but perfectly understandable combination of letting go and treasuring. You let go because you know you have to, that they are not you. But you treasure because you know how fast it all goes, and sooner than you know it, the little one who won’t let go of you? Well, you’ll see him twice a year. If you’re lucky.
\nBut even with the experience of parenting older children, the emergence of a younger child’s individuality still surprises. What I’m thinking about tonight, though, isn’t even individuality – that’s obvious from birth. No…it’s the inner life of a child. The revelation of something deeper churning in that head – the beginnings \"\"of a different sort of self-awareness.
\nThe other night, Joseph and I were looking at a book. It was this one – a flap book about the human body. <\/a>We were looking at the pages about the heart and the circulatory system and I was explaining to him how the heart works and what was going on when his heart was beating.
\nHe lifted the flaps, looked at the pictures, and considered this. Then he said thoughtfully, “Sometimes, when I take the timed test at school,” – the “timed test” being a drill of 100 simple math problems they’re given 3 minutes to complete – “Sometimes, when I take it, my heart starts beating really fast.”
\nAnd he sighed.
\nAnd for some reason, I thought that my <\/em>heart would break.
\nSuch a little thing. A seven-year old just mentioning that he gets nervous before a practice test. But so many things ran through my head. Welcome to life. It sucks sometimes. Just wait. If you think that’s bad..<\/em>
\nBut most of all it broke my heart because once again, it reminded me of my limited reach. My helplessness.
\nIn a way, it is not fair, this thing that God does. He gives us these little creatures, beautiful and gorgeous, who need us so badly, who need us for absolutely everything, and that is the way he calls us to love them – to give and give and give through sleepless nights and exhaustion and the eventual, shocking realization that if you were called upon to give your life, you would.
\nWIthout hesitation, without regret.
\nAnd then, almost as soon as you get used to thinking and living this way…they start needing you less. And less. And their inner lives, which once seemed one with yours, become, so gradually, their own private place, the place where they wonder and struggle, rejoice and hurt.
\nWithout you there.
\nIt is hard for a parent – perhaps particularly so for a mother. But it points, as everything seems to do, to the importance – the vital importance – of introducing our children to the faithful presence of the living, loving God.
\nOh yes, there will be times, to be sure, that your heart will beat fast. So fast. And you might not even be able to breathe. There will be times that there will be no one there to tell about your heart, beating so fast and hard as you face the next thing. And the next. And the next.
\nYour heart will beat within your chest, you will fumble, unsure what to do next.\u00a0It’s true.
\nAnd it grieves my heart that for most of it, I won’t be there.
\nBecause I won’t. Even now, I see so clearly…I’m not.
\nBut even so, even though I will be long gone, just know this – that you will never – and I mean never<\/em>\u00a0 – be alone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the experts talk about parents and children, they talk a lot about separation, about the child’s gradual distinction of the self from the parent. What they don’t talk about as much is the parent’s gradual distinction of the self from the child. This is something I think and talk about a lot. I’ve always…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nBeating Heart - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/05\/beating-heart.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Beating Heart - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When the experts talk about parents and children, they talk a lot about separation, about the child’s gradual distinction of the self from the parent. What they don’t talk about as much is the parent’s gradual distinction of the self from the child. This is something I think and talk about a lot. I’ve always…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/05\/beating-heart.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-05-19T23:30:49+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3009\/2506945831_e87f94b989_o.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Beating Heart - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/05\/beating-heart.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Beating Heart - Via Media","og_description":"When the experts talk about parents and children, they talk a lot about separation, about the child’s gradual distinction of the self from the parent. What they don’t talk about as much is the parent’s gradual distinction of the self from the child. This is something I think and talk about a lot. I’ve always…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/05\/beating-heart.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2008-05-19T23:30:49+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3009\/2506945831_e87f94b989_o.jpg"}],"author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/05\/beating-heart.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/05\/beating-heart.html","name":"Beating Heart - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/05\/beating-heart.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/05\/beating-heart.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3009\/2506945831_e87f94b989_o.jpg","datePublished":"2008-05-19T23:30:49+00:00","dateModified":"2008-05-19T23:30:49+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/05\/beating-heart.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/05\/beating-heart.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/05\/beating-heart.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3009\/2506945831_e87f94b989_o.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3009\/2506945831_e87f94b989_o.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2008\/05\/beating-heart.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Beating Heart"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}