Article May 18, 2009 Issue

FROM FEAR TO TRUST LOOSENING THE PARENTHOOD GRIP

BY SARA HOAGLAND HUNTER

IF YOU HAD TOLD ME five years ago I'd be seeing my child off on a journey to the other side of the world with just the pack on his back, I would have been skeptical. If you had told me I'd be waving goodbye without a white-knuckled grip on his itinerary and a litany of last-minute instructions, I would have been incredulous. But thanks to the challenging, fulfilling, and full-time spiritual education I've received as a parent of teenagers, I can finally say I'm almost as calm and ready as he is.

As my husband and I prepare for our son's journey, let me share a little of our own. Our road map in raising children has always been the Bible and Science and Health. It would be hard to find plainer, more effective guidance than Moses' Ten Commandments, the Old Testament stories, Jesus' parables and Sermon on the Mount, and Mary Baker Eddy's practical references to the importance of family. That said, there were times I found myself caught between what Science and Health describes as the "solemn charge" of raising a family (p. 61) and the statement in the same chapter of the book, "In Science man is the offspring of Spirit" (p. 63).

It took work to grasp that my parental duties and the need to lean on God as the divine Parent of all of us were not mutually exclusive, but completely in concert with one another. Our solemn responsibility as parents was to understand and support our children's relationship to God.

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