I own three pairs of glasses. Yes, three. I once lost two pairs in one week! Then I replaced them — only to find a pair days later. My eyesight was not the only problem in need of a new prescription. Recently, I had one of those epiphanies in which you realize that the little problem that’s been bugging you is really symbolic of a much bigger one.
My latest eyeglass prescription necessitated three trips to the store and two trips to my ophthalmologist to get it right. What should have been a simple errand turned into a month-long hassle. I was extremely impatient with the process. However, my five trips to the store and the eye doctor gave me time to fume, er, think: What was really at the root of my impatience with these inconveniences? Hmmm… Ouch! Lord, now I see…
While I was trying to improve my vision with new glasses, what I really needed to examine was a series of parent-teenager clashes that had me simmering just below boil. Frustration with my glasses brought this into sharp focus. I wasn’t ticked off about the glasses nearly as much as I was about my teenagers. Lord, how could I be so blind?
Parenting teens requires good sense, ready patience (of which I was already in short supply) and deep emotional resources. Relationships between parents and teens can be a game of balancing variables that are in a constant state of flux while the players are always in motion. There are few time-outs and the clock always runs. Sometimes the players collide, even when they have the best intentions and the deepest love for each other. And when that happens it is as painful as it is exhausting.
My husband and I now recall the days when we skipped blissfully along the parenting lane before reaching this bend in the road known as adolescence. Our faith and marriage have been stretched by this phase of family life. We’ve always prayed about our parenting dilemmas, read parenting guides, and conferred with parents more experienced than ourselves. But none of it grants us immunity from problems.
Our struggles were in the guiding-them-while-letting-them-go department. Mistakes and skirmishes produced tensions that built up over time and the hurt became routine. Yes, we had “issues.”
We needed help. So we got some — the professional kind. My husband calls it “life coaching.” It’s a process that we entrust to God while we do our part to resolve family conflicts.
Prayer and counseling give us new lenses through which to see one another — a prescription that remedies the heart and perspective. We see what we are doing well, and what we can improve. Sometimes it brings us to the humblest place of admitting mistakes, asking forgiveness, and starting over. Nobody likes to get it wrong, but long-term, admitting our failings is the healthiest, holiest option. And that alone is worth the time and cost of counseling, especially effective when coupled with prayer, including the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
I may continue to lose my glasses, and even my temper, from time to time. But I hope and pray never to lose sight of my loved ones, or the road back to them if I’m lost.
“Blessed are your eyes, for they see” (Mt 13:16 RSV).
©2006 Patricia W. Gohn
Pat Gohn has been married to Bob for 23 years and has three children. Known to her friends as “majoring in carpooling and minoring in theology,” she is currently pursuing a Master's in theology. She lives in Massachusetts and can be reached at [email protected]. Her monthly column “Ordinary Time” appears at www.catholicmom.com.
