I had an amazing revelation at 4:30 AM this morning. I have no idea what woke me up. Maybe Nessie, my chocolate Lab puppy, was chasing birds in her dreams again. But while I was trying to go back to sleep I had a ground-shaking thought . . .

I think I finally understand my parents!

I grew up with extraordinarily encouraging parents. I had no idea. They were just the parents to me. I thought all parents were alike. I loved them but I didn’t really know them.

Over the years I listened to the stories they told of hardships. When the family got together my aunts and uncles told tales on my parents that I’d never heard. They laughed a lot. By the time I was half grown I thought the Great Depression and World War II were great adventures. Like pirate stories. Like children’s books, cartoons and movies. Like jokes.

When I hit junior high – now called middle school because we don’t want to damage their precious little psyches with the scarring term junior – I began to learn the truth, kind of. War was hell. The Depression was hell. My definition of hell fell well short of reality but I was learning.

It was college before I ran into my first truly evil parent, the kind that steals the college money you’d worked odd jobs for years to save, leaving you penniless and forced to drop out. Then I learned of worse parents.

By the time I had three kids I knew the full weight of responsibility. When my wife, Suzie, got multiple cancers I learned what my parents were truly made of. They were unfailingly there for us, sacrificing time and money, even praying for God to take them instead of Suzie – their daughter-in-law.

Then my father died of cancer after a long fight and I learned what it was like to live without his constant encouragement. Then Mom had her own health problems and came to live with us. I had to become the encourager and felt inadequate to the task compared to my parents unfailing support.

But it took until this morning at 4:30 AM for it to all come together. A lifetime of knowing my parents and being encouraged by them, a lifetime of stories, a lifetime of growing up suddenly made sense and I knew.

All of those stories came together. They were stories of facing starvation, war, poverty, ridicule, attempted kidnapping, theft, murder, natural disasters, disease and death. They had made them sound entertaining, funny even, but they weren’t.

Without the jokes, the family support and the perspective of survival, they could have added up to a horrible life. The difference was how they responded to the tragedy, the faith that held them together, the love that gave them courage, the certain knowledge that they were in it together.

They became good at encouragement, no make that great, because they had to be. Their situation constantly forced them to find courage, to create it from nothing. They practiced it. They refined it. They depended upon it.

Love gave them courage. Faith that God loved them and would be with them gave them strength. Tragedy tempered them like steel. Hardship hardened their spines. Survival gave them confidence that they, with God’s help and each other’s love, could survive nearly anything.

That’s a far cry from contrived self-esteem.

In college I once hinted with a smile that Dad had encouraged me so much because parents have to lie and tell their kids they can do anything. He was offended.

Anger flashed in his eyes. “I did not!” he said and he seemed to grow before my eyes to the size he was when I was a child. Or maybe I shrank. “I told you the truth because I saw your abilities.” Then he went on to list them. It was obviously not something he had to think about.

He knew more about me than I did. He knew in advance what I could face, how much trouble I could handle, how much courage I could find. He knew because he’d been through worse than I’ve ever had to face. He knew because of a lifetime of survival in hard times. He knew the power of faith. He knew the strength of family.

He knew.

And now, as of 4:30 AM this morning, so do I.

 

 Photo Credit: gregor_y via Compfight cc