God's Guide for Grandparents. Susan M. Erschen

       Acceptance

      “I can’t wait until I am a grandparent,” a friend once said to me.

      “Don’t wish your life away,” I told him. He was a young man with five children under the age of ten. I was a grandmother enjoying my first grandchild. Why would he want to fast forward his life to the stage where I was?

      He was an outstanding dad. He cherished his time with his young children. Yet, he explained why he also envied my position. He told me I had more of the fun and good times and less of the difficult and tough moments. He was right.

      A comic bumper sticker says, “Grandchildren are your reward for not killing your children.” While being a parent is a wonderfully joyful and rewarding experience, being a grandparent is somehow just a little better. Being a parent is like climbing beautiful mountains. But it also comes with the risk of being plunged down into deep and dark valleys. Being a grandparent is like being on a plateau of joy. Parents have a profound love and pride for their children, but they also know worry, frustration, and impatience. We grandparents often have a more level relationship with our grandchildren.

      In a homily on the feast of Saints Joachim and Anne, the patron saints of grandparents, our parish priest said, “I have never met a grandparent who did not think his or her grandchildren were the most perfect, amazing grandchildren ever.” It is true that as grandparents we get to see more of the good in our grandchildren and less of the naughty. We have more fun times with them and less of the work and discipline. We are able to enjoy their strengths and their goodness, while parents have to deal with their weaknesses and faults.

      The Acceptance of Youth

      So, what can we learn from all this goodness we see in our grandchildren. One virtue I admire in my young grandchildren is acceptance. It seems to me they are very accepting of people and situations that we adults may have learned to judge in negative ways.

      When my granddaughter was only three years old, her family moved to a new home thirty minutes from her preschool. Even though it meant driving over an hour a day just to take her to or from her old preschool, her parents made the decision to let her finish out the semester there. They did not want her to experience too much turmoil in her life all at once. She loved everything about that preschool. She loved her teachers. She loved the playground. She loved all her friends. I worried how she would adapt to being put into a new school after the Christmas break.

      As grandparents often do, I worried unnecessarily. The first time I saw her after she had started in the new school she was bubbling over with enthusiasm for her new school, her new teachers, and her new friends. I admired the acceptance with which she embraced the change in her life. She especially talked about her new friend. He was so funny. He made her laugh. He was so nice. He showed her where everything was in her new classroom. He helped her when she was confused because they did things differently in this new school. He smiled at her when she was nervous or afraid. What she did not tell me — because she never even noticed — was that her new friend was of a racial background different from hers and he wore special glasses for a vision problem. None of this registered with her. She accepted him and liked him completely for the person he was inside. I thought how wonderful our world would be if we all were as accepting as this three-year-old.

      Unfortunately, we rarely make use of the opportunity to learn from children. Instead, we tend to teach them our bad habits. This point was made in the musical South Pacific. Ahead of its times, the Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein production that premiered in 1949 and was made into a film in 1958 explored the tension and sadness prejudice can cause in our lives. One of the songs in the show is “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught.” It suggests that very small children do not pay attention to the differences in people. Yet, sometime around grade-school age, kids start mimicking the prejudices they see in the adults around them. Racism is something we learn as children, something we are, as the song says, “carefully taught.” We are not born with prejudices.

      Prejudices are nothing new. The world into which Jesus was born was full of prejudices. The Jews did not like the Samaritans. The Romans hated the Jews. Even the apostle Bartholomew, originally known as Nathanael, had prejudices. When his friend Phillip told him about Jesus, Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” (Jn 1:46).

      Yet, Jesus ignored and broke through all prejudices. The story of his birth shows the infant welcoming two groups not accepted in Judea — shepherds and foreigners. Throughout his life, he embraced those who were generally not accepted — lepers, Samaritans, tax collectors, and women. We are called to do the same. For the sake of our grandchildren, let us try to let go of the prejudices we may hold. The world will be a better place if we do.

      Seeing Jesus in Others

      To overcome our prejudices, however, we need to become aware of them. Only then can we avoid passing these biases to our grandchildren. Young children are often blind to the differences they see in others. Maybe that is one of the reasons why Our Lord told us, “Amen, I say to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it” (Lk 18:17). In this area, let us strive to be more like our grandchildren, rather than teaching them to be like us!

      Let’s admit it: Many of us love to judge. We all do it sometimes. We judge whether an outfit looks good on someone. We judge whether a home is neat and attractive. We judge whether children are well-behaved. We judge the quality of the produce we buy for dinner, the data in a report we are reviewing, the value of an item compared to the cost we must pay. We might say judging is important because it helps us make good decisions.

      The problem, Saint Paul tells us, is when we judge other people. He admits, “Indeed, I wish everyone to be as I am, but each has a particular gift from God, one of one kind and one of another” (1 Cor 7:7). As Christians we are called to accept the differences between us and the unique qualities that belong to each of us. We are asked to see others (and ourselves) as God sees them. We are told that it is possible to see Jesus in every person because he lives in each one of us.

      I don’t know about you, but I am not very good at seeing Jesus in others. I have never turned around and seen Jesus pushing his cart too close to me in a checkout line. I have never seen Jesus driving the car that just cut me off. I have never seen Jesus instead of the woman who is blowing cigarette smoke my way as we pass on the sidewalk. All I see are human faces that belong to people who at the moment are annoying me and making it difficult for me to accept rather than judge. Although I am not good at seeing Jesus in others, I have had some success imagining Jesus with other people.

      We can begin by imagining Jesus with our grandchildren. We can imagine Jesus running with them to the playground, sitting with them building blocks, or laying with them on a pile of pillows watching television. Once we have gotten used to seeing Jesus with our grandchildren we can try imaging Jesus with someone we might be judging.

      My first attempt at this strategy brought me to laughter. An older man, whom I had judged to be arrogant and foolish, roared past me on the road in a convertible sports car that screamed midlife crisis. I tried to imagine Jesus with this man, sitting in the passenger seat with him. Jesus was not berating him for his bad investment. Instead, Our Lord had his arm over the back of the seat, laughing with his long hair blowing out behind him in the breeze. That helped me realize how totally wrong I was to judge this man and his situation.

      Pope Francis tells us, “It is a profound spiritual experience to contemplate our loved ones with the eyes of God and to see Christ in them” (The Joy of Love, 323). Seeing Christ with them may not be quite as profound, but it can be an easier place to start.

      What we do not Know