Making Space for Who They Are

loving the child in front of me

As I wrapped the present with brightly colored birthday paper, I had feelings of wistfulness, longing, and melancholy wash over me.  This was a bedside lamp I purchased for our son when he was newly born, dreaming of what his boyhood bedroom would look like after the nursery decorations were long gone. It was a cool baseball lamp, with a resin glove for the base. 

My husband is one of the hugest baseball fans I know so of course our son would be too. I had the whole bedroom pictured in my mind—decked out in a baseball theme, with this lamp as the starter piece.

And now I was wrapping it up to give it away to another little boy.  After moving it to several houses and storing it in our crawlspace, still in its original box with the bubble wrap tightly around it, it was time to face the realization that this son I love with my whole being has little to no interest in watching or playing any game that has a ball involved (can we count Quidditch?).  And a bedroom with baseball decorations is just not who he is. 

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This same son of ours is also asking to be called by a new name, effective this past summer.  He has a long name, but for all ten years of his life, he’s always been called by a shortened nickname.  It’s a cute one.  One that makes me happy and is just him, through and through. 

It began when he asked us how we chose his name and we told the story of how we had three names picked out, why we liked them, what significance they held, how each could be shortened, and that some even could be really shortened by using the initial of his first name and middle name.  With eyes lighting up, he declared that he wanted to be called like that—by his first and middle initial—from now on. Because it sounded cooler.  More grown up than the nickname he’s had for ten years.

So we’re trying. We’re trying to remember to call him it and are almost always successful. He’s asking friends, neighbors, relatives, and teachers to use his new name too.  Relatives, neighbors and teachers are complying.  Friends have been harder. 

He came home on his first couple of days of school this year frustrated that all of his peers were still calling him by old name.  We tried to say that’s how they’ve known you for ten years, give them time, they’ll get used to it.  But according to him, they are defiantly calling him by his old name, even when asked not to.  They seem to be arguing with him, as only kids can do, saying, “Uh-uh, that’s not your name, your name is this.”   

Wanting to help, I even offered to bribe the peers that were being kind and cooperative, telling my son to let them know that all the friends who were trying to use the new name would get a pack of Skittles at the end of the week. That’s how low I was willing to sink. Until I had a hard stop from the school, saying no outside treats can be brought in or given away at any time—for holidays, birthdays, etc.  Sigh.

And so, a month into school, we still struggle.  With my son trying to burst out and become something, or someone new. And others not wanting to Make Space for that to happen but rather keeping him in the tight box they have known him.

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Baseball lamps that are not meant to be and choosing a new name makes me think of some friends I’ve accompanied who have raised children who came out as gay or transgender.  I remember how hard that journey was, as they needed to tell that story over and over, worrying about perceptions but mostly their child’s future which now seemed harder. Everyone around them needed to get used to seeing their child in a new way—with an orientation that was true to who they were.  They were challenged to Make Space for this person they knew and loved to be who they had had always been, who God created them to be. 

And for my friend who had raised a daughter struggling with gender, she now had to get used to a new name, new pronouns, and an altogether new way of seeing her child.  It is a painful journey, one not freely chosen by the child or family. But this mom did it with openness and love.

How far are we able to stretch, how far can we go in our own limited, narrow view we start with as we are challenged to love our children, and to love them as God loves? To love wildly, freely, recklessly? To be as compassionate, merciful, and generous to our children as we know our God is?

Ronald Rolheiser, a Roman Catholic priest, member of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, lecturer, and writer, describes in his book, The Domestic Monastery, that parenting stretches the heart, just as the womb is stretched in pregnancy. Although I’ve never carried a child to term in my womb, this resonated.  The love for my children is like no other love I’ve known.  Rolheiser states clearly, “Parenting reshapes the core of your being to help you to love more like God loves.”  He goes on to say, “To be a mother or a father is to let your dreams and agenda be forever altered.”

All of this—the new name, the baseball lamp we needed to let go of, and accompanying friends with transgender or gay children—is about allowing our children to be who they always were, as God created them, not as we once saw them or wish them to be.