Love out of Control

Decades ago, I was leaving church one Sunday when a somewhat older friend caught up with me to ask how I was doing. In retrospect, she probably noticed my eyelids half open and the lack of my usual bubbly smile. She was my unofficial mentor, always kind to me, always understanding, always sharply dressed, always “together.” I knew she had kids and grandkids. I imagined they, too, were “together” and always had been.
I do not recall any of the details I shared with her about why I was so tired from tending to my teenagers the night before. But when I declared, “I will be so glad when they are 18 and graduated from high school so I will know I have gotten them successfully raised and on their own,” her cackle outdid the steeple bell clanging behind us.
It was not a mocking cackle. It was the all-knowing cackle of a wise and loving parent who was just a few steps ahead of me with adult children who were on their own winding paths, just as mine would be in a few years.
Her cackle ended as abruptly as the church bell. ” Honey, you will always be their mother, and they will always give you something to pray about,” she said, ever-so matter-of-factly with a soothing smile. I stood stunned in the parking lot, disbelieving this could be so. A young family leaving with their precious toddler and infant excused themselves around where we stood in the door and wished me a good day. It was a sad moment.
At the time, it was not what I wanted to hear. I wanted to believe that magically on their 18th birthdays, my children would take high school diploma in hand, enter college, eventually marry well, and enjoy health and happiness with lots of perfect children of their own. And I would enjoy visits and phone calls about all their pure happiness, polishing my knuckles on my chest, beaming from ear to ear, patting myself on the back, forgetting the long era of monitoring their every teenaged move and never again having to worry about them.
But her comment was fortuitous. It gave me a glimpse of what was to come so that I could be more prepared as the mother of adult children. And, it has served me well as a spiritual director, which I became a few years after this incident. In countless encounters with people - whether in formal spiritual direction sessions or chance encounters with strangers - I have been blessed to listen to people who weave their stories of personal and spiritual events as they seek God. Not surprisingly, many stories include perplexing situations in which a person is coming to grips with loving adult children who are no longer in their control.
People with children continue to be concerned about them long after their children age into adulthood. There comes a point in which the “child” is on their own or of “legal” age and the parent experiences wanting to help their adult child. Initially this seems like helping the grown child know how to handle various situations. But this never stops. Parents think because they’ve been alive 20 years longer, more or less, than their child, they know how to handle everything. It's the aged version of kissing a booboo to make it better. But somewhere along the path to maturity, such help isn’t needed or wanted. Yet, this pattern repeats itself through many different situations the adult child faces on their journey. We parents get another dose of reality and awkwardly move into the era of loving our adult children who are out of our control.
In a 2019 study reported in The Gerontologist, lead author Amber J. Seidel of Penn State University-York noted that parents continue to remain engaged in the lives of their grown children, and having knowledge of their lives often leads to increased stress and lack of sleep.
As parents of younger children, we can make choices and find solutions to help them, but when they are grown, they begin to make their own decisions. That’s when we parents may worry more for a variety of reasons. Most concerns about adult children fall into one or more of these categories: finances, relationships, and faith. The bottom line is we are no longer able to manage our adult children in any of those situations and rightly so. We’ve wanted them to grow up and be capable, productive, happy adults.
While it is typical for people of faith to suggest prayer to solve a situation – and that certainly can be a way to calm one’s anxiety and find answers – realizing that one is not alone also can be comforting. Therefore, I offer these meditations to demonstrate that the issues faced by parents today are as old as time itself.
To my own adult children and all of the people I’ve been privileged to listen to with holy ears as a spiritual director, if you see yourself in any of these meditations, it is purely coincidental. In fact, it further shows that these situations are ancient and more widespread than one may realize. Rather than share stories that were shared with me confidentially, I meditated with characters in the Gospels, letting their situations be the connection between ancient and current times. I was careful not to reveal anyone’s personal story.
Listen to the parents in the Gospels. Listen for your own thoughts and feelings. Prayerfully seek God’s peace, comfort and hope.

Kathleen Phillips