From today’s Gospel: “Where I am going, you cannot come” (John 13:33). Jesus tells his disciples that he is leaving them. Those primal human fears: ABANDONMENT; ALONENESS. The disciples respond with panic, confusion, and division. A darkness descends upon them.
But we know in this Easter season that the light broke though darkness. The disciples find hope and a sense of mission by setting their eyes on Christ and following his way.
Christ had to leave them so they could put on their big boy pants and learn how to use their gifts to continue Christ’s mission in the world. Christ had to leave them so 1) they could grow in the virtue of faith, 2) find him again through the Holy Spirit, and 3) remind them that we are all but pilgrims passing through the world.
As disciple parents, we too will find ourselves feeling alone and abandoned at times. We will find ourselves blindsided by doubt and confusion. Even when our intentions are good, we may take a wrong turn because of our own blindness, emotional wounds, or failure to love (sin). Or perhaps despite our love, warmth, and commitment our child takes a wrong turn and makes choices that hurt him or others.
At these times, sometimes only briefly, at other times for weeks or months, we won’t know what to do; we’ll be tempted to panic. As difficult as these transitions through darkness can feel, they are part of our path of maturing as disciple parents.
Maturity requires us to adapt when things aren’t working, finding a new approach to a problem we can change or accepting what we can’t change.
Sometimes the answer is to take a deep breath and wait for answers. If you are like me, you want to have a plan, you want to work at fixing the problem, but sometimes the only answer is to do nothing but love quietly in the chaos, to collect our child through the 6 ways of attaching, to grieve what we can’t change, to let go of control and allow God to lead us forward in our mission as disciple parents.
The mistake is to surrender to the darkness, to despair. In our own feelings of aloneness, confusion, or disorientation, we can cling to this hope: when we love one another, Christ is with us. We will always find the right path and the light again if we long for the light, seek it in prayer, and open our hearts to it.
The darkness has already been crushed.