Prayer of a Proud and Good Enuf Mama

Dear God,

Thank you for listening, if you are. I have a lot of lifelong questions about that, but I've been reading this book about the twelfth century Abbess Hildegard lately, and I guess you could say I'm writing this under her spell.

I have come to you today to ask for your assistance. Vanity and boastfulness threaten to overwhelm me, and I need someone to properly humble my inappropriately soaring ego. No one has ever proved better at undermining human ego than you, so even though it's been years since I last prayed, I suspect you've been gleefully marking time: That omniscient aspect of you.

My trouble is not, please understand, that I've become vain about myself. No. You took care of that decades ago, when you dispatched me from nothingness into being, a grossly imperfect being complete with overbite and stick straight hair and a figure, once I was old enough to think of having one, to match. I was not even vain about my intelligence, which for some peculiar reason you chose to grant me, peculiar since within the circle of my middle class family I was unlikely, especially since I was created female, to ever fully use it. No. I was raised to be just "good enough." When I won an award for scholastic excellence, I shredded it on the way home. When my first poem was published, it was published under my best friend's name. There was no sense calling attention to oneself. Good enough was the goal. Throughout Scandanavia, where "good enough" is still a way of life, they even have a special word for it: "Jante." In the north central states of the US, which are full of Scandanavians, Jante is practically a way of life. Which may be part of my problem today.

You see, I have extraordinary children. Large children. I mean, they're actually young grown-ups. They can out run me, out argue me, even out think me. Very vexacious if extraordinary creatures they are, both of them, and I am having a heck of a time not bragging about them, of becoming one of those irritating adults who live through their children, who act like their children's accomplishments are their own.

Some parents start this the first time their toddler bobbles out onto the soccer field and keep on advancing in a linear formation all the way through the high school graduation where the now grown toddler was almost certainly bypassed for the valedictory address just because she had once gotten the better of the advisor in a debate on whether to initiate an open campus; she really should have had top honors but for her perfect character.

But I am trying to hold out. I was at a large dinner party a few weeks ago, in a big old house full of interesting adults with satisfying careers come together from all parts of the globe to enjoy each other's company. And it was great until about ten o'clock, when someone started bragging about their progeny. Then someone else had to chime in. Then someone else. Then someone turned to me and asked brightly, "Aren't your kids doing something amazing?"

I blinked. Yes. Both of my kids are doing many amazing things I would never have had the ability or the courage to do when I was their age (or since). But I don't want to spend my own precious life talking as if it is their lives that matter, not my own. It diminishes me and it diminishes my responsibility for living my own life to its fullest and best. I blinked and said, "I'm sorry. I have to leave now."

Raising my children is without a doubt the best and most fulfilling occupation I have known, but if I did not hope to do something equally wonderful and good with the rest of my life, wouldn't that be like giving up? My children's lives do not validate my own. And yet, when one of my kids calls me to tell me the next incredibly wonderful accomplishment of their life, I want to broadcast it to the world, in a way that I do not care about broadcasting the accomplishments of other equally wonderful young people. It really does feel as good as if I did it myself. But I didn't. They did it.

God, this is surely empty vanity. It is not quite as shallow as deriving a sense of personal satisfaction from the championship of a professional sports team maybe, since my children do at least have my own DNA and my imprint on their successes, but it is empty. We each need to live our own fullest, best lives. We need to lead lives so full of excellence that our own children are tempted to brag about us. We need to set that constant example, all the way through. It's so easy when we hit middle age to let our children live for us. But we still matter. The world and our children still need us to accomplish wonders, too: To be wonderful still.

Let me lead that life, God. Help me to be as fine as my own children. Let me not rest in smugness, boasting of them. Funny. As I was writing this, one of my kids called and told me about a really great compliment received on some work. I have never felt happier. Thank you for listening.

Amen.