I told that story several times over the next few years, but there was a growing uneasiness in me about what I had really done, and finally I came to understand the lesson I needed to learn from it all. Some of it may be seeing things in hindsight, it is certainly easier to realize some things knowing that everything turns out OK (that is, seeing that Eli grew out of those challenging teen years into a wonderfully amazing man).
I began to ask myself some very important questions about that concert. Would it really have been so bad if he had missed that one day of school and seminary (we’ve taken our children out of school for other reasons)? Would it have been too much of a sacrifice for us to let him use my car for the trip so he would be safe? Would it have been possible for one of us to drive him and his friends there? Could we have listened to some Smashing Pumpkins music and realized it wasn’t morally corrupt (their version of “My Blue Heaven” has since become one of my all-time favorite songs)? Could we have considered that perhaps there never would be another chance for him to attend a Smashing Pumpkins concert (there never was)?
And therein lies the lesson I’ve come to understand: When you love someone, whatever is important to them becomes important to you by virtue of your love for them. My efforts to “be in control” of the situation prevented me from responding to him out of love; I had failed to make what was important to him be important to me. I prevented something that I should have been working to bring about.
I am so sorry, Eli.
1 comment:
I appreciate that, Mom. I must make one correction, however; I did have a chance to attend a Smashing Pumpkins concert about a year and half after that one. I took the Chevette to Boulder two days after I got it running and went to school the next day.
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