Legacy

It's funny how my moods seem tied to the liturgical year - or maybe it's the weather patterns that seem to reflect the liturgical year. Nonetheless, each time this year as Lent gets underway, I find myself in a contemplative, pensive mood. This year is no different. News the past week has been hard. We learned of a life gone too soon after a freak car accident, politics are flat out painful to watch, and we're walking alongside our preteen and watching seeds of insecurity creep in. That's a hard walk as a parent; shepherding your children through the same waters of self-doubt and self-consciousness that I waded at the ages of 11-13 awakens those long-latent adolescent insecurities that surprisingly still live inside my almost 40 year old self. It's hard to let our kids swim through the hard emotions too. I want to take them away and make everything sunny and bright. Alas - we live in the Pacific Northwest and even the weather won't help me make that happen.

Turns out, truth can't let that happen either. If we've learned anything on this grand adventure, it's that telling the truth really does set you free. It's unsettling at times, but heaven knows - you never go wrong with honesty. Today's truth for my 11 year old is that sometimes it is hard. Sometimes your friends are better than you are at something. Sometimes you won't make the team. Sometimes people are mean. It's almost harder for me to own these truths than it is to have traditionally difficult conversations because these truths speak to my own failings. These truths remind me that sometimes I've been mean, sometimes I've made a friend feel 'less than' and these truths remind of times I've felt sorry.

Lately, I've been wrestling with the number of people I've encountered who've been hurt by the church and the times I felt hurt by an institution that is so much a part of who I am. It's hard for me to name the truth - but what I've realized is there are many times when we Christians climb up on our high horses and, frankly, get a bit uppity about our own importance. I've heard stories of folks being told they are 'less than' because of their doubt, because of their beliefs, because of who they are. It's embarrassing. And it's made me sometimes shrink away from identifying myself as Christian...and has made me say it in an apologetic way, not a self-identifying way. That kind of realization rocks me to the core and makes me empathetic to Peter in his triple denial.

My latest wondering has been about what this means for the legacy I'm building. My *hope* is that those I love most, those who know my truest self, know I try. I don't always get it right, but I really do try. And when I realize I've botched it, I try to make it right. I apologize and admit where I went wrong. Truth-telling. When our kids ask us hard questions, we're honest. We've lost the need to sugarcoat the truth, because, truth just is. There aren't versions of it. And truth means  admitting that we don't have it all together, that we have strengths and weaknesses, confidence and insecurity. Looking back, that's what I hated about adolescence - learning to admit that all of me is made up of dichotomies living in tension with one another. It's hard truth to accept and the acceptance comes in waves - if we did it all at once I don't know if anyone would survive. My Lenten practice this year is swimming alongside my children in the murky waters of self-acceptance and forcing myself not go ahead to make the path easy, but to be present through the rough and still waters - their safe place to find rest. I will remind them along the way that there's always hope, rebirth and a new day dawning; that they are worthy, lovely people who are 'becoming'. I'll also remind them that I'm still 'becoming' and that we're in it together - building legacy is a group effort. May we all do each other proud.