Gradual Emancipation: A Parent’s Sacrifice

From the moments they begin to crawl and take their first steps, they are inching into a broader world.

The first time they take the spoon and go after the peas and carrot on their own or eat the spaghetti with their chubby little fingers from off their high chair tray, they are gaining independence. We clean up the mess, because they have to learn to feed themselves.

The first time they climb to the top of the playground equipment and stand above that bright blue slide, they are preparing to fly. Our minds scream for security, but we must let them try, because they will never learn to face new challenges if they only stay on the ground.

The first time they take the car keys in hand and cruise down those country roads, while our hands clinch the seat, our foot presses the floor like an imaginary break petal, and our heart beats in our chest, they are preparing to go. We hand over the keys, because they cannot follow their life’s road if they never leave the house.

When they unpack that overloaded car, and move their boxes in their first dorm room, and you try to hold it together as they wave goodbye, we do it by faith. We do the hard thing by driving away, because it is time for them to fly.

Parenting is the long goodbye. It is a gradual emancipation, because chicks were never created to stay in the nest. Everything about their growing years is preparing them for the day they will leave the nest. But as parents we have a choice. We can allow our fears to create a cage for our children. We can clip their wings and rationalize our actions by convincing ourselves that we want the ‘greater good’. We want them to be ‘safe’. We can make gilded cages, where we can enjoy the songs of their restricted life, but where they never taste the joy and danger of freedom. We have the choice to make caged birds.

Maya Angelou speaks of these moving ideas in her beautiful poem, Caged Bird.

A free bird leaps
on the back of the wind 
and floats downstream 
till the current ends
and dips his wing
in the orange sun rays
and dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks
down his narrow cage
can seldom see through
his bars of rage
his wings are clipped and 
his feet are tied
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings 
with a fearful trill  
of things unknown 
but longed for still 
and his tune is heard 
on the distant hill 
for the caged bird sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze
and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees
and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn
and he names the sky his own.

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams 
his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream 
his wings are clipped and his feet are tied 
so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings  
with a fearful trill  
of things unknown 
but longed for still  
and his tune is heard  
on the distant hill  
for the caged bird  
sings of freedom.

Freedom is not secure, because freedom in the end cannot be controlled. So I must live intentionally; I must emancipate gradually. I trust to the truth of His purpose, and remind myself that it is the wild bird not the clipped one that has a hope of escaping the hungry cat. I let go gradually, though I want to hold on tighter. I ask myself, “Will I cage my bird, or will I let her fly?” Even if that means I do not get to enjoy her song all to myself, because I am sharing it with the world.

I have considered these thoughts and questions over and over again as my eldest daughter goes off to college, and joins her place in the wider world. Will I draw her back, or let her go with God? As I think and consider, trying to mediate and not worry, Mary’s sacrifice has come to mean a whole new thing to me. Mary held the son of God in her arms and her heart beat close to the heart of God. Then all through the unexpected days and events, from the shepherds to the prophecies in the Temple, from the wisemen to the journey into Egypt and back, she loved her son and watched him grow. Luke tells us that “…Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.”

Then he turned twelve, and her boy that was always around, always in his place, was lost to her for three days. Her mother’s heart pounded in fear as she searched for her lost son, and after finding him in the temple she cries out, “…Son, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing.” And she hears the words, “How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” She is stopped in her tracks. Her desire to keep him safe has truth spoken to it in the form of a question. He has a reason for coming to this world, a purpose that cannot be completed in her home in Nazareth.

Though it was his Father’s will for Him to submit to his earthly parents’ for a few more years, I think that on that day, a clock in Mary’s heart began to count down. It beat away the moments. She knew it was coming. She knew she was living on borrowed time, so “His mother kept all these sayings in her heart.” He had come to go, not to stay.

Mary made the choice of the long goodbye, even when it meant that she would stand beside a cross. She chose to sacrifice, because hard love opens up the clinched hands and gives up the thing loved to God. Like Mary we pray, we weep, we love from afar, but we have all the more joy when God’s purpose in their lives is fulfilled. “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.”

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John Sommer

John always wanted to be Robin Hood when he was little, that is, when he was not playing with Lego and dreaming about designing houses. Now he and his wife are missionaries in West Africa, and writers in whatever part of the world they happen to find themselves on that day.

You can find John’s first book, Zao’s Tales at Bandersnatch Books: https://www.bandersnatchbooks.com/books/zaos-tales

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