Learning To Fish

Give a man a fish...

I was blessed to have grandparents who doted on their grandchildren. They wanted to guide and to help us but sometimes their best intentions had a negative impact. I'll take the responsibility and lay the blame on my personality but my need to please coupled with their need to control (because that is what often comes of helping) seemed to launch me into life with very little idea of myself as an independent person. I looked continually for their approval and learned early in life that this would be easiest achieved by doing things their way. So I chose my clothing and my wedding plans and many other details with the thought of pleasing other people.

The problem is that I accomplished very little under my own steam and never learned to be daring enough to be whatever me I was gifted to be. My successes I felt owed to the generations before me and my failures were my own. No one ever taught me this, it was just the way I was. I am trying to learn now, since I am the older generation, what kind of help and expectations are for the sake of my kids and which are for my own satisfaction. I cannot dream their dreams and God does not reveal his plans for them to me. I don't want to make life easy in return for their "obedience." They shouldn't live to please me but to learn to hear the Holy Spirit to find out how to please him. And this, will please me.

I don't want to withdraw my help when I disagree with their path.

I want to give them the opportunity to meet themselves everyday and to find themselves joyously surprised at what God has birthed within them. They owe me nothing because all I can do for them is really just standing between them and heaven, handing the blessings that were never mine in the first place to the next recipient.

And I own nothing of their accomplishments. Like earthly blessings, I only held them for a moment before placing them into a world that so needs these men with God's anointing on their heads.

For today, I celebrate their victories and stand with them in their defeats. I know the only truth is that all is the Lords and for his pleasure.