Hints from Heloise never included throwing laundry out the window

By Mary Regina Morrell
© Catholic Online 2005

"Truly you have formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother's womb. I give you thanks that I am fearfully, wonderfully made." (Psalm 139: 13-14)

Now that my sons are almost all grown men, the exploits of their youthfulness take on a softer air. Episodes that were at one time exasperating can now be seen through the lens of humor.

Such an episode came to mind recently when I was walking across the back yard and found a sock hanging on a Rose of Sharon bush. Suddenly I remembered a scene from years ago when my husband was yelling at my son:

"That's how you clean?! You throw the things out the window?!!"

I turned from the stove to face the three boys who stood motionless in the kitchen. Though none of them spoke I knew without a doubt which son was in trouble..

Suppressing the small smile that began to creep across my face, I said to my husband, "I'm not sure I want to know, but what, exactly, are you talking about?"

"I walked to the driveway to put the garbage cans behind the gate and I noticed towels and dirty clothes, cardboard boxes and junk laying in the driveway and hanging off my truck!" my husband stated emphatically.

My son, expecting a friend to visit, had, with his own unusual approach to things, decided to make space the room over the garage so the two boys could lift weights.

Looking at us as if we were the densest pair who ever walked the face of the earth, he calmly explained that it "was faster" this way as the garbage had to go out to the driveway anyway. What he failed to consider was the possibility that the towels and clothes, at least, could have been washed and put back in the closet. And speaking of towels, that's another story.

At the school my son was then attending there was a cage full of rabbits. Somehow he got the idea that they were being raised as dinner fare, so when a rabbit escaped from the cage my son got him a ride on the "above ground" railroad, stuffing him in his duffle bag and smuggling him home on the train.

For the longest time I noticed unusual thumping sounds above the kitchen. Finally, my son admitted he had given free reign to his new found pet in the room over the garage -- a good companion, he thought, for a second rabbit his brother had recently rescued. For more than a week, these two furry fugitives ran amok in that room, leaving behind a bevy of "gifts" among the used towels dropped on the floor!

This son is the one who has given us more sleepless night and more moments of laughter than all our sons put together. He's the one who would earn me my wings in heaven if people could become angels and the one that constantly reminds me that God gave every person unique and marvelous gifts that shouldn't go unrecognized because of an often equal number of shortcomings.

As a parent and educator I am sorely aware of the need to discipline and the need for children to experience the consequences of their choices -- two gifts that parents too often deprive their children of today; two gifts that, when offered with the loving authority every parent should exercise, will bring immeasurable benefit to a child's character.

But as important, is the need for every child to believe in their own worth as a child of God.

Too often, in the classes I teach and the workshops I facilitate, I hear the painful revelations of adults who grew up believing they weren't good enough. Grown men and women who still struggle with the pain of not being smart enough, athletic enough, pretty enough, thin enough, ad infinitum; adults who now feel they are not successful enough or competent enough; who are unable to give or receive love well because they do not know how to love the person they are.

God created each of us in love and dwells in love within us. But for many of us, this understanding has been marred by feelings of inadequacy or the painful memories that led us to believe we were unloved or unlovable.

There is no better gift for our children than the understanding that they were loved into creation by God; that their failures and their shortcomings are not cause for self-ridicule but challenges to be met with God's grace.

Then, as adults, they may believe the words of Scripture, "Truly you have formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother's womb. I give you thanks that I am fearfully, wonderfully made."

Contact

Diocese of Metuchen
http://www.diometuchen.org NJ, US
Mary Regina Morrell - Associate Director, Office of Religious Education, 732 562.1990

Email

mmorrell

Keywords

hints, Heloise, laundry,God, wonderfully made

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