On Monday, I led our church\u2019s Mom-to-Mom group through a Bible study on the helicopter mom of the Bible. Guess who?<\/p>\n
No, not Rebekah, the mother of Esau and Jacob \u2014 she sure helicoptered, but she also was so dysfunctional with her strong preference for one son and scheming against the other that I didn\u2019t think she was very helpful.<\/p>\n
In my humble opinion, the helicopter mom of the Bible is (drum roll please. .) Salome, the mother of the disciples James and John, the wife of a prosperous fisherman, Zebedee, and (some think) the sister of Mary, Jesus\u2019s mom.<\/p>\n
Salome, with two strapping fishers-of-men by her side, strides to Jesus, kneels down and asks him a favor.<\/p>\n
Jesus asks, \u201cWhat is it you want?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you come into your glory, would you please put one of my boys at your right and the other at your left hand side?\u201d<\/p>\n
When I go before Jesus on behalf of my kids and he asks, \u201cWhat is it you want?\u201d how do I answer?<\/p>\n
Right now I want one child to respectfully ask me to help obtain \u201cAnnie Get Your Gun\u201d costumes and props rather than handing me a piece of paper and saying, \u201cHere\u2019s your list.\u201d<\/p>\n
I want another child to break through shyness, make deep friendships and overcome math and a math teacher who doesn\u2019t seem to teach.<\/p>\n
And I want yet another child to obsess less about make-up, clothes and thinking she\u2019ll have the perfect life if she gets into HYP (Harvard-Yale-Princeton as she calls it).<\/p>\n
I want all three to flourish, to discover and use their gifts on behalf of a broken world, to love and be loved.<\/p>\n
But most of all, I don\u2019t want them to suffer. And that\u2019s what I think is at the heart of the hovering helicopter parenting style.<\/p>\n
Fear that our children will suffer.<\/p>\n
We fear that if we don\u2019t:
\n Follow Sears, Brazelton, Ezzo, or whoever the latest parenting guru\u2019s advice to the nth degree our kids won\u2019t attach, have healthy self-esteem, or grow up God\u2019s way. Set up the right playdates, or socialize with the right moms, or get our kids in the right social groups our kids won\u2019t find the right friends and will end up bullied or ostracized. Get our kids into the right schools or activities, they won\u2019t get into the right college, where they won\u2019t meet their right spouse, or get prepared for the right job, where they can\u2019t afford to live in the right suburb which will lead to the right pain-free life.
\nJesus says to Salome\u2019s request, \u201cYou don\u2019t know what you\u2019re asking \u2014 can you drink from the cup I\u2019m going to drink?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can!\u201d all three reply.<\/p>\n
Jesus looks at them with sadness, \u201cYou will indeed drink from my cup, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared by my Father.\u201d<\/p>\n
The cup Jesus talks about is the cup of suffering. The same cup Jesus begs God three times to take away in the garden of Gethsemane before he goes to the cross.<\/p>\n
He knows Salome, James and John will all drink from that cup of suffering. In the gospels, Salome shows up again at the foot of the cross watching Jesus die, and then at the tomb bringing spices to anoint Jesus\u2019s body. James will be the first disciple to be martyred. John will be the last disciple to die after seeing all his friends martyred first.<\/p>\n
Jesus came into his glory and kingdom while hanging on the cross. And two nameless thieves hung on his right and left side.<\/p>\n
Isn\u2019t that a bummer? When we go to Jesus on behalf of our children, ultimately asking that they won\u2019t suffer, his answer is NO. They\u2019re going to suffer and there\u2019s nothing we can do to prevent that. It\u2019s a dangerous world out there, and all the hovering I do won\u2019t keep my kids safe.<\/p>\n
Yet ironically, our kids are safest by Jesus\u2019s side. So somehow teaching our kids how to suffer well, how to transform their pain rather than transmit it, how to forgive or turn the other cheek may actually be one of the most central tasks of our parenting.<\/p>\n
There are a couple things Salome did well.
\n 1. She followed Jesus herself<\/p>\n
2. She released her kids to follow him also
\nShe released her kids to leave the family business to follow Jesus. She released them to a whole new mission in life. She released them to suffering and death, but through their suffering the world was never the same again.<\/p>\n
What do you say if God asks you, \u201cWhat do you want?\u201d<\/p>\n
What do you fear? How do you release your kids to the future they\u2019re called to?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On Monday, I led our church\u2019s Mom-to-Mom group through a Bible study on the helicopter mom of the Bible. Guess who? No, not Rebekah, the mother of Esau and Jacob \u2014 she sure helicoptered, but she also was so dysfunctional with her strong preference for one son and scheming against the other that I didn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[169,1120,1118,604,1121,106],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7992"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7992\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}