Tonight I said, "We need to talk about this for five minutes and then we never have to talk about it again." He cried. Drama loomed. Drama is utterly counterproductive in a situation like this, because it encourages you to feel sorry for yourself ("my finches died and she's so unsympathetic") or adversarial ("how dare she suggest that I was responsible?") or other emotions that only get in the way of doing what you need to do. So I didn't take the bait. He said, "I know it was my fault."
I told him that he had an opportunity to let something good come from what had happened -- that it could be a spur to work on bad habits, to take a step toward being a person who does his duty cheerfully instead of avoiding it. I didn't want to do a lot of finger-pointing; I said, "We all struggle with sloth." (In thinking this over (and over and over) I have been acutely aware of my own willingness to walk past a mess that needs tidying, or an out-of-place object that needs to go back to its home.) I told him that I would love him no matter what mistakes he made, and that he never needed to be afraid to tell me he had made a mistake. But I urged him at the same time to let his mistakes teach him what he needed to do differently next time.
Once, years ago, I was avoiding something I needed to do and I said to Elwood, "I'm having one of those who-will-rescue-me-from-this-body-of-death moments." He had NO idea what I was talking about. I might have been speaking Croatian. But that passage from the end of Romans 7 speaks so clearly to me that I assumed he would have to know it: "I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want....For I take delight in the law of God, in my inner self, but I see in my members another principle at war with the law of my mind, taking me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members." It is one of the central tensions of the Christian life. On the one hand, it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose; on the other, you can be more or less cooperative in that work. You can't tie yourself up in perfectionist knots, and you also can't kick back, reading a novel, and expect sanctifying grace to do all its work while you relax. I am bad at this balance, and so I am questioning my ability to teach it to my children.
Tonight I wanted to say two things to my son: you need to be more responsible, and I will love you unfailingly while you are learning how to do that. How I hope both halves of the message came through.
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