Who's watching the kids?

Little Brian Jay’s mom used to read him a story every night before bedtime. It told of how all the stars in the sky are like God’s eyes watching over His creation. Of course, this was intended to be a comforting idea. But one night, Brian Jay’s mom came to his room and discovered all the shades pulled down tight and the bedcovers pulled up high. When asked what was wrong, the young boy replied from deep in the dark, “I don’t like all those eyes watching me.”

As a single mom to a teenager, I would have appreciated a few more eyes on the scene to help keep track of my daughter! When my husband passed on, I felt as if I were drowning in the deep end of the pool as a parent. So much was happening at once. She was quickly growing up, and boys were starting to call the house. The Internet, with instant messaging to a wide world of strangers, was just beginning to take hold. Everything was changing in front of me and fear was spinning me out of control. I couldn’t watch her all the time, could I? Yet, I felt like that was my job now.

A big “wake-up” came one evening. I was standing in my closet with my ear pressed to a glass against the wall (yes, just like on TV), falling over my shoes, trying to hear what was being said in the next room while my daughter was talking on the phone.

I had a brief “out-of-body” experience and saw myself standing there looking desperate and stupid with anxiety. “What am I doing? This is not normal!” I thought. I climbed out of my closet and sat down on the bed and prayed: “God, I can’t do this … I can’t parent alone.”

Then, I heard a voice speak from deep within my consciousness, saying: “But you are never doing it alone. I am with you. I am your daughter’s Parent and your Parent. Let’s go forward from here on a ‘need-to-know’ basis. Watch and listen for what I (God) am saying about Betsy. I will tell you what you need to know when you need to know it.”

A proverb from the Bible tells us, “Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors” (Proverbs 8:34 ). To me, this kind of watching involves watching and listening for what God has to say about our children. 

My daughter's divine Parent was always on the scene.

It wasn’t that I thought of God as a superhuman watching over His creation. Rather, God is the divine Mind of all, the source of intelligence, intuition, and goodness. What God as Mind knows of us is that we are perpetually good. So God’s watch recognizes only goodness, and Mind gives us the intuitions that bring out that good and maintain harmony. I heard God’s reassurance, “I will tell you what you need to know when you need to know it.”

I exhaled deeply. I wasn’t alone. My daughter’s divine Parent was always on the scene even when I wasn’t watching or listening. I could trust her safety to God and could go to bed in security and peace. Then came the test.

The next night, I went to bed as usual. Suddenly around midnight I awakened with the thought, “Go into your office now.”

I obeyed the intuition and started down the hallway. Just as I was about to pass the computer room, I heard Betsy on the phone, saying: “Mom is in bed. She turned on the burglar alarm, but if you come to the office window, it isn’t armed. I will meet you there.” Seriously? In my head I heard, “Need to know! Need to know!”

So I walked through the computer room and into my office without saying a word about what I had just overheard. My physical presence was enough. Next thing, I heard, “Never mind!” as my daughter hung up the phone.

Taking a deep breath, and silently thanking God for the heads-up, I went to talk to Betsy calmly about how her friends were welcome to come visit before the burglar alarm was set, but that we wouldn’t want to bring guests in through windows in the middle of the night. Message heard and accepted, we could move on from the moment. We chuckle about it to this day.

The beauty was that I wasn’t afraid anymore. I didn’t feel alone. Things would come up, as they do with any child growing up. But I knew we would be able to work them through.

Prayer would help me deal with any lurking parental anxiety.

After putting a stop to the late-night invitation to her friend, I had a long talk with God on parenting, listening to the spiritual intuitions that came so naturally from Him. Our divine Father assured me that parenting without fear and trusting spiritual intuition to guide me would enable me to keep my daughter safe. Prayer would help me know how to nurture the behaviors and establish the mutual trust that were essential to her progress. Prayer would also help me deal with any lurking parental anxiety.

In fact, I had daily conversations with our Father through prayer, to help me keep a steady, stable view of my daughter’s spiritual innocence and goodness as God’s reflection. As for praying for myself as a parent, I came to lean on the first part of a hymn in the Christian Science Hymnal: 

This daily consistent prayer for both parent and child helped us enormously through the rest of my daughter’s teenage years. If you ask her now, my daughter would say, “Mom, you didn’t have it so bad!” And she would be right. Through the help of daily prayer, I had it really, really good as a parent. Thank you, Father.