Loading...Growing up is hard. Maybe especially when there’s a family business in the mix. At least that’s my experience. My parents had their own business. They sold giftware to retail stores as manufacturer’s representatives.
I worked for my parents for years. I think I started when I was about 12. Over the years, I helped customers in our showroom, talking about different products, writing orders, and helping with some of the office work. Some of the early jobs I had were because of connections made through my parent’s business.
There was hope that I (or one of my two younger brothers) would take over the business one day. When I started college at one of the local community colleges, my major was business. I was barely 18 and lived at home for those two years. After winning a small scholarship for a story I wrote, and doing very, very poorly in economics classes, I knew a business degree was not for me. When I moved on to Winona State University, I chose and ultimately earned an English Writing degree.
My brothers both went into the Air Force. None of us took over the business. Each of us took our own path from adolescence to adulthood, experiencing life in our own ways.
As the first born, and probably because I am the only daughter, there were certain expectations and responsibilities placed on me. My brothers seemed to have much more freedom than I ever did. Double standards were the norm. Mom was home with us until we were all in school while Dad was a traveling salesman. It was a traditional family system in the 1960’s and early 70’s.
Maybe growing up, for me, wasn’t so hard. I had limited career choices, or so I thought. College was a way for me to figure out who I was and what I wanted out of life. I would meet myself along the way, but never really felt like I took too many risks. Dare I admit it? College was a way to find a spouse.
But I do think growing up can be hard. Especially when I look back on our two children’s experiences, but mostly when I think about second born, our daughter, Erin.
It was her junior year of high school. You know, that academically challenging time, full of pressure to keep or raise your GPA to be accepted into colleges. But you don’t know which college, so add in the stress of going on college campus tours where you explore options, fill out applications, learn about the FAFSA, and apply for scholarships.
Adult family and friends try to be supportive, asking questions about the students’ future college plans, because at least in Erin’s situation, it seemed like attending college was the expected next step. No one really talked about trade school. Some mentioned the armed forces. She got a letter from the Naval Academy, encouraging her to apply. And according to a conversation I had with Erin to ask permission to tell you this story, a “gap year” was for rich kids.
We visited several colleges. It was on a big circuit of college visits when we learned of one of Erin’s greatest anxieties about choosing a college.
We had just left our alma mater, Winona State University, when Erin had her nose in the brochures, pen in hand, marking it up. I asked her what she was doing.
She said she was circling any of the degree options that she found interesting. She said she felt like she needed to know what she wanted to study before she even applied. That she needed to know what she wanted to do for a living before even choosing a college.
This sounds like a reasonable thing to say, but it was said in a way that expressed that she believed it was expected of her to know what the rest of her life would look like. She believed she needed to have a set plan.
Telling her my story of changing majors didn’t really matter all that much. The fact that Jeff knew what degree he wanted the minute he walked onto campus, and he got that degree, even though he never became a radio DJ, might have made her feel like she would be letting us down if she didn’t have a plan. Of course, that’s not how we felt.
But that was a lot of pressure for a teenager. Unfortunately, Erin’s story is not unique. We adults want our children to succeed in life. We want them to make good choices. To not make the same mistakes we made. Or maybe TO make mistakes we didn’t make! To make lifelong friendships and grow into solid, contributing adults.
When Erin decided to go only three hours away to Winona State to major in Composite Materials Engineering, we were thrilled. We knew she wanted to tap into her interest in science and math. And this was the only university in the country offering this major. Being a young woman in this field would be an extraordinary opportunity. That’s a lot of pressure, too.
She made friends, played bassoon in the band, participated in clubs, and had a job. Classes were hard, and she did her best to be successful.
At the end of her sophomore year, I took a call to serve in my first parish in Indianapolis. That July she was in a car accident that totaled the Subaru and shook her body but didn’t cause much injury. It might have been that same day when her bicycle was stolen. She no longer had transportation to get to her two summer jobs. Then, in November, she had an emergency appendectomy.
But it was physics that did her in. After three years, she left the program, left Winona State, deflated and likely feeling a bit that she had wasted, or squandered, those years. She moved into her own room in our house in Indy at the end of the school year. She had accumulated substantial student loans, and knew she needed to either start paying them back or go back to school.
She went to work, started paying on her student loans, applied and was accepted to Ivy Tech to study Biotechnology, changed jobs, and kept going. The campus was only a couple of miles from our house. She loved the program, and after two years, received her Associate of Science degree in Biotechnology without accumulating further debt. She was hired in her field of expertise within weeks of graduation and is still in that job, nearly 6 years later.
Erin bought a house, has a couple of cats, and has good friends. She’s close to paying off her student debt. She’ll be 30 in November.
It’s a nice story, as a story goes. But it is just a few hundred words that only tell the highlights of a much deeper, much more complex story.
I wonder if the story of the younger son in today’s parable might be just a few words telling the highlights of a much deeper, much more complex story.
We make a lot of assumptions about the younger son, don’t we? We think he may have conned his father out of his share of the inheritance so he could run away from whatever his family expected of him. There are key words in the text, like “squander” and “dissolute living” that paint a picture of a reckless young playboy who has no idea what responsibility means. We think that it took losing everything to realize what he ran away from. And all these things may be true.
But there is a line that jumps out at me and makes me wonder, this time around, if maybe, just maybe, we might be forgetting something about what it means to be a young person as they mature. That it is hard to grow up.
That line? “But when he came to himself…”
When he figured out who he was.
Some people may think that the transition from childhood to adulthood, that growing up, has a preferred path. We’ve created a process that moves kids from high school right into some kind of college or trade school without a break. When we hear a high school grad say they are going to take a “gap year” we might click our tongues or roll our eyes and think that they are just afraid to grow up.
What if, instead, it is because they want to know themselves better before they jump into the next thing? What if the son in the story needed to spend time with himself to be able to come to an understanding of what was most important to him? What if he needed a “gap year?”
I wonder if “when he came to himself,” he realized not that his father would bankroll him for the rest of his life but instead realized that to be a contributing member of society, he needed to be a part of a community, and that the community he wanted to be involved in was the one he came from.
Isn’t that what we hope for our young people? We want them to go away to find themselves and return with a new understanding life. We know that going to college, or into the Service, or to work, or even to take a gap year is a great opportunity for our young people to come to themselves—to begin to understand their own responsibilities, needs, hopes, paths, without someone hovering over them. We want them to figure out what is important for them, even if we don’t agree or understand their choices sometimes.
Our young people are on a precipice, teetering from youth to young adult and we need to give them the freedom to explore who they are. We give them, as the saying goes, both roots and wings, with the hope that they will have the foundations necessary to make good decisions as they fly away.
The father in today’s parable gave both of his sons roots and he gave them wings. He raised both boys to young adulthood, and then he gave each of them resources for the next stage of life. The older son chose to remain home, receiving daily training and responsibility to run the family business. To the younger son the father provided some financial support as he left the security of his home to find himself.
And as any parent does, the father watched for both of his sons, whether literally or figuratively, to become men. To mature in ways that helped each of them understand what it meant to be a responsible member of a family and a community.
But the inability to see the younger son come into his own came with deep concern for his well-being. So, when he saw this newly minted man walking the road home, the father rejoiced. He greeted his son with hugs and kisses, with tears and smiles. He brought him into the house, giving him gifts that expressed his pride that his boy “came to himself,” how he matured, and can now, rightfully take his place in the family and the community. And like anyone might do, he threw a party—a commencement party, perhaps—to celebrate this new beginning.
Of course, the older brother was jealous of his brother’s opportunity to go away to become an adult. He stuck around and did all the things to keep the family farm working. We don’t know if he did it out of obligation, out of fear of the unknown, or if he never left because he knew it would not change his responsibility as the first-born son, as the heir to whatever his father would leave.
But we know he was furious that upon his brother’s return, their father made a big deal out of it. It might have taken days, weeks, or months, but there was a chance that over time, the older son would realize that his younger brother just might be ready to share the responsibility with him. His brother might have learned something that could make all their lives easier. Hmm.
We will never know. That’s the thing about this parable. We don’t know how it ends.
Sure, growing up is hard, but when you know that you are always welcome to return to the place that let you go so you could find your way; those places where people know you and love you and who will listen to whatever tales of your adventure you want to tell; then growing up can be a little easier. Because even in those times when growing up is lonely, someone waits for the day for the ring to be placed, the fatted calf to be butchered, and the celebration of adulthood to begin. Amen.
