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Every man who marries and lives with children in his life faces the daunting challenge of watching his loved ones suffer. There is no exception. If you have a family, they will feel pain and suffering. If you choose to be a source of power and protection in their life, you will experience your family’s difficulties with them. You will feel their pain as your own.
Being there is just the first requirement. Most men stick by their families and bear with the difficulties involved. Typically this includes what feels like a struggle for power as well as teamwork in finding the next solutions. Of course the solutions—true solutions—are not our concern. Our concern is the struggles that have buried themselves inside our spouse and children.
How do we understand and support our families when they or we feel like we are part of their suffering? What’s a guy to do when he feels he HAS TO do something to stop the pain of his loved ones?
The inevitable truth of life and fatherhood is that life is changing constantly. Our efforts to hold life in a neat little comfortable form has and will always meet with the disruption of change. Life is not going to stop because we want it to. My child’s helium balloon, floating away into the blue, is not going to return. And the one I hurry to replace it with will eventually disappear. Our question is how well I tolerate my child’s anguish and disappointment. Am I man enough to simply be quiet and love this life with all its twists and turns while waiting for the change that resumes a belief in life’s worth?
Do I understand that my spouse and children have their own experience, which is not separable from loving nature? Yes, they will stand in front of me with complaints about the past and imagined future. They will writhe with the torture of their disappearing dreams…..failures, losses, betrayals, disappointments. My job is to stand solidly in a world that holds us while I heartfully embracing them with our shared life.
This doesn’t mean solving their belief in separation from good. Rather, our place is remaining directly aware that life itself holds the answer. And while I am part of that, my value exists as the potential to be lovingly present, patient and understanding. From that will arise what is needed. It will not be my compulsion to erase their pain. My value exists in recognizing life has put me here confidently, quietly, the same way it is bringing change to my loved ones.
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Photo credit: Pixabay
