Family
Challenges
Enemies "R"
Us
I don't know about you,
but I can conjure up in a flash the names and faces of most of the
villains of my grade-school and high-school careers. Here is the unpleasant
kindergarten lass who turned around in line one day to poke me straight
in the eye; the substitute teacher who lambasted me to tears in front
of the whole class for something I didn't do; the high-school friend
who, upon learning she had won a coveted prize that I had also applied
for, gloated about it in front of me.
Your offspring have enemies
galore, of course, just like you did. I remember my surprise when,
as my son began preschool, I realized that some of the kids tried
to punch him when the teacher wasn't looking, broke his favorite car
that he brought for show-and-tell, and made fun of him. As years have
gone by, he also has had his share of kids whom he simply can't stand,
for no particular reason that I can identify.
Enemies multiply rapidly
with age: the guy who sold me that lemon of a car, the boss who passed
me over, the neighbor who blows his barbecue smoke into my bedroom
window, the louts who jeer at my son as he strikes out for the third
time in the game.
Like it or not, Jesus
told us quite clearly what we are supposed to do with these people.
"Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those
who curse you and pray for those who maltreat you. If you love those
who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those
who love them" (Luke 7:27-28, 32). I suspect we find these words
as hard to swallow as first-century Jews did, even though weÕve been
hearing them for centuries.
A few years back, my son
had a music teacher who was a complete disaster. A musician who had
never taught children before, this guy was apparently stunned that
kids might decide to goof off in his class (we're talking first-graders
here, folks). The children spent most of music period each week with
heads on the desks in a lengthy time-out. The evening before music
class became one of dread, filled with stomach aches and tears. Along
with gently informing the principal, we struggled with what to tell
James, and finally hit on the idea of praying for the music teacher.
(God knows he needed it.) A few weeks later, James reported, "You
know, Mom, Mr. M wasn't quite so bad today. Maybe the prayer helped."
You never know, I thought.
These days we are praying
for two kids who have been blacklisted by my son for various playground
offenses against him and others. I usually suggest that we pray not
for them to "reform" (which to me reinforces the usually
false notion that they are "bad kids"), but that we ask
God to bless them with all the blessings we would wish for ourselves:
health, happiness, etc. Sometimes we also remember to pray for Saddam
Hussein, an even more famous villain in a much bigger playground.
I once heard a lecture
on sin by a priest. He asked us what we thought was the root of all
mortal sin, then turned around and wrote on the blackboard two words:
bitterness and resentment.
Years later someone else
told me that resentment is an acid that eats its own container.
You don't let your kids
play with acid, do you? Try prayer. It works. Jesus said so. (by Catherine
O'Connell-Cahill)
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