Their Name Is Today. Johann Arnold Christoph
otherwise it stops here. I learned a lot from my grandfather. He would be upset if all the knowledge and life lessons that he shared ended with me. So I feel relieved that I get to pass it on to another generation. My son can take it on and hopefully pass it on to his kids.
Parenting is a roller-coaster ride. It’s not always easy, but it’s not always going to be tough either. The rewards compensate for the costs that you pay. The things that are given back to you far outweigh the “burden” of not being able to go out to the bar for a drink, or whatever you want to do. Nothing beats the feeling of their arms around you. Just to look a child in the eye and know that you’re the reason they’re here, to see them explore the world – you can’t put that kind of feeling into words. Part of me that was locked away for many years is coming back out and I’m learning how to play like a child again.
I deal with harsh realities every day. To come home at night and just sit there and watch my son sleep – it makes the world okay.
Sceptics will say that it’s one thing for a family with two parents and two jobs to talk about welcoming children. But I heard the same message from someone with none of these benefits. Lisa, a home-care nurse, raised her daughter alone.
My friends keep asking me how I did it. I’m still not sure how to answer. I could say it was tough. I could tell you that we ate whenever we had something to eat, and it was sometimes once a day. I could tell about sharing a mattress in front of the faulty heating element. But my daughter, who is nineteen now, will tell a different story: how we laughed till we knocked the heater over, how we cried onto each other’s shoulders. Of course she would have liked a dad. Of course I kept praying for him, and he didn’t come back. But where would I be without her? I don’t think I would have made it alone. And I hate to think of the world without her in it.
Not every child is as fortunate as Lisa’s daughter, raised by a brave and resourceful mother, or Mark’s son, with two strong and determined parents in a secure home. But I’ve found that children remain children at heart, even those who have been deprived of a childhood. They may be victims of abuse, addictions, or broken families. Though emotionally scarred, they look at you with so much hope. You can see the questions in their eyes: “What can you do for me? Where do I fit into this world?” Over the years I have learned that every child has a story to tell. Each of their stories needs to be told to someone who has time to listen – a parent, a trusted teacher, a guidance counselor.
My wife and I are co-founders of a program called Breaking the Cycle, which seeks to bring the positive answer of nonviolent conflict resolution and forgiveness to schools, where the fear of school shootings, as well as gang violence and bullying, affects children, teachers, and parents. At some assemblies, we address several thousand students at once. Looking out over such a sea of children’s faces is inspiring, but also sobering. Every assembly reminds me of the Hasidic saying, “If you save one child, you save the world.” It is vital to tell children that they are important; that we are here for them and love them.
Hashim Garrett has become a keynote speaker in this program. At age fifteen, he was shot six times in a gang-related attack that left him partially paralyzed from the waist down. At first, he was filled with anger and a desire for revenge. But in time, he realized that forgiving the perpetrator would liberate him from the trap of hate, and give him the opportunity to help others.
A devout Muslim, Hashim says his faith has guided him toward forgiveness. It has also helped him and his wife make critical choices on the home front as they wrestle with the difficulties of raising a family responsibly:
I am blessed to have a beautiful wife, Mia, and two wonderful children. Being a husband with a disability is a test. There are things that I cannot do with my wife and children. I cannot play in the ocean with my children on vacation. I cannot teach them how to ride a bike. But my children know that their father loves them very much. I have learned that the quantity of our possessions is not what’s truly important; it’s the quality of time we spend together. When I am home, I play with them, hug them, bathe them, feed them, read with them, and most importantly, we pray together.
When we enrolled our two-year-old daughter in daycare, it was with an overwhelming sense of vulnerability; for the first time, we would leave our only child in the care of strangers. It seemed totally unavoidable. Harmony attended daycare nine hours a day while I worked and Mia went to school. After a time, we began to notice behavior and personality changes in Harmony. She would cry, throw tantrums, and not want to go to school in the morning. This was not the daughter we knew.
My wife seriously considered quitting her training to stay home with Harmony. At first, I was very concerned about Harmony’s social development and our lack of teaching experience. I could just imagine our relatives and friends asking, “Why would you want to take your child out of childcare?” Then there was the financial sacrifice required for one parent to remain home, while the other worked full-time.
But it came to a tipping point. With our family spending most of our day away from one another, we were using our physical and emotional reserves on things other than our family. We missed the laughter in our home. We finally decided to begin homeschooling Harmony.
Our decision has transformed our home into a place where everyone is learning. My wife and I learn patience with our children. We learn to love, laugh, and appreciate the small things. We learn to forgive one another.
Hashim and Mia considered all the difficulties arrayed against them: Hashim’s disability, their economic challenges, and their children’s needs. Then they consciously chose to put their children first. To them, nothing was as important as those first precious years of being together and starting off right.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt often emphasized this essential task of families in society:
We all recognize that the spirit within the home is the most important influence in the growth of the child. In family life the child should first learn confidence in his own powers, respect for the feelings and the rights of others, the feeling of security and mutual good will, and faith in God. Mothers and fathers, by the kind of life they build within the four walls of the home, are largely responsible for the future social and public life of the country.
Just as we cannot take care of the child apart from the family, so his welfare is bound up with a lot of other institutions that influence his development – the school, the church, the agencies that offer useful interests for leisure time. . . . And the money and hard work that go into these public and private enterprises are, again, repaid many times.1
As a nation, how far have we strayed from this vision? Raising children and educating them takes courage, but there are tremendous rewards. Parents and teachers can leave a legacy that will not be forgotten. But it can’t stop there. We need to speak out beyond the walls of the home or classroom.
On behalf of all children, we need to turn our national priorities upside down, with spending for children at the top, and guns and bombs at the bottom – if we leave them there at all. New schools, not new prisons, could multiply across the country, and politicians could win on the most creative platform for education, not the toughest approach to crime or the most belligerent foreign policy.
The world needs children, but they also need us.
We owe them more than mere survival. In the words of Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore:
Children are living beings – more living than adults, who have built shells of habit around themselves. Therefore it is absolutely necessary for their mental health and development that they should have not only schools for their lessons, but a world whose guiding spirit is personal love.2
New children are born into our world every day, and as Tagore writes, each one brings “the renewed message that God has not lost faith in humankind.” It is a mystical thought, but it carries a challenge as well. If the Creator has not lost hope in our humanity, who are we to do so?
Chapter 2
Play Is a Child’s Work
Play is the highest expression of
human