The Helicopters

There were fifteen in my group, all freshly scrubbed in various states of 9th grade euphoria.  Some were very excited; some yawned loudly; many were vociferously anxious about having to leave their phones behind.  As the bus pulled up, a few parents squished in close for an extra hug or two and a careful word about watching out for snakes and bees and dust and... and... and...

A few of the kids were nervous, but the most nervous were kept home - sick, their parents would say, an ailment that they didn't see coming, but camp brings out the rotor blades in many parents.

Helicopter parents.

The term first occurred as a metaphor in Dr. Haim Ginott's 1969 book, "Between Parent and Teenager."  He describes a parent who hovers over their child like a helicopter and others have described this phenomenon of parents being perpetually physically present but emotionally absent.  Helicopter parents are hyper-vigilant about their child's physical surroundings but relatively clueless about their emotional well being.

On camp, the 9th graders were, for the most part, ready for a different kind of adventure.  It has been described as a survival camp, or something like that, but for the most part, because of helicoptering, most of the survival has been filtered from it and camp is just a four day separation from the helicoptering parents.  Georgia researcher and professor, Richard Mullendore, says that the rise of the mobile phone has created the explosion of helicopter parenting - the world's longest umbilical cord.  We probably see it every day; parents calling their children during the school day, at their friends' houses, during all hours of separation. 

Just to keep them safe. 

Ironically, keeping the kids from physically challenging opportunities actually seems to have the opposite effect.  Those kids that aren't given the chance to push themselves, or even move through the pain of twisting an ankle, scrapes and cuts, bruises and welts from the outdoors, seem to be more prone to making physical mistakes later in life.  Parents, often well intentioned, try to shelter their kids from the physical pain and in essence, stunt their maturation and the apron strings that should long ago have been untied, have created a generation of kids who don't know how to deal with pain and danger.

Frightened of the media's portrayal of abduction, or accidental death, parents don't let their kids walk, or ride their bikes, to school but instead drive them each morning unaware that the odds of their children being hurt in an abduction are infinitesimal as being injured in a car accident.  But the online difficulty is where I'm seeing the most tragic pain occurring.

The greatest problem is: often the same parents who have extreme boundaries about what their kids can do in the outdoors have no limitations on where their kids can go online.  Given no boundaries or even techniques of navigating the digital wilderness, kids wander aimlessly in the forests of pornography, anonymous social media and drown in the deserts of images and videos.  How often do I attempt to constructively allow the kids in classes navigate their assessments using the technology at hand to research only to find them on a thread of youtube. 

Blame is not placed squarely on helicoptering, but somehow we, as a community, especially a Spiritual community, must find ways to build the fences within which young people can explore both the physical and digital world.  We must give the youth of today guidelines for working through pain and unrealized expectations and in the midst, if our children do feel pain (which they will) we must resist the urge to morph into Apache helicopter parents - not just parents that hover, but now attack.

I am as guilty as anyone else, but I'm trying hard to shut down the rotors and give my children the best opportunity to succeed in all worlds.  

I actively pray and encourage other parents to do the same.

Marriage Quality

Different countries have taken a stand on the issue of marriage - well, it's definition, anyway.  All over the world wide web, different personalities, celebrities, pastors and lay people alike have dipped into their buckets of theological and secular opinions and typed their fingers raw about who gets to marry whom.  But one thing that has been absent amidst the nuptial noise is what marriage is - not just who gets to partake in it.

Our contemporary western culture thrives on its ability to define our lives by the available options.  Marriage is no different.  We revel in the fact that we have twenty kinds of toothpaste from which to choose and even Australia is famous for the world's biggest selection of car models.  As I walk down the grocery aisle, it is not lost on me that I can select from seven different types of toilet paper while thinking about which kind peanut butter will create the perfect PBNJ sandwich for me. 

That kind of decision making process, so many choices coupled with our contemporary understanding of time paupery, leads to a diminished view, in my opinion, of what marriage actually is.  Instead of a holy promise of life time commitment, perpetual forgiveness and a cohesion of faith, we find 21st century marriage titrated through the pipette of choice culture.  Marriage has become disposable, like exchanging a Samsung for an iPhone.  It just depends on what model trips your trigger.

In the animal kingdom, there are all sorts of fauna which mate for life.  Gibbons (it's kind of like a monkey - I had to look at the picture), swans, black vultures, wolves and even albatrosses (I'm not sure how to pronounce that one) find the perfect mate and stay with them for life while raising a brood of infants (gibbons), cygnets, chicks, wolflets (I know, they are really cubs, but I like this better), and baby albatri.  With the divorce rate escalating beyond fifty percent, we find that people are mating for all sorts of reasons other than life.  Some marry for money, some marry for 'love,' some marry for the comfort and ease of continuing to share the same space in which they have been living.  But the culture really doesn't marry until death parts us - only until choice separates us.

Looking at the statistics for divorce, it seems like our contemporary culture should be much more obsessed with marriage quality than marriage equality.  Unfortunately, as the acceptance for divorce seems just another choice in the shopping list of matrimony, we encounter not a vow of faithfulness but a vow of 'like.'  What I mean by that is: in this day and age as we strive for the metaphorical 'thumbs up', marriage can seem like that.  Conditionally speaking, we stay with our spouses as long as they please us (as long as they keep 'liking' what we do, or we 'like' what they do.)  We post messages and videos of the perfect side of life, but when the other half does something that threatens our sense of individual choice and happiness, we react with almost an instantaneous de-friending.

We don't marry our friends but profiles on our own Facebook page.

So, we see that marriage is less about mating for life as it is enjoying the wedding.  A pastor I used to work with said it like this:  "I find it interesting the more I meet with couples that they spend so much time planning for the wedding that they forget about the marriage afterwards.  I liken it to a couple preparing to go on a cruise around the world but they blow their entire financial resources on the going away party rather than the ports of call on the trip."  The wedding day with all of its glamor and glitz, invitations and expectations, dances and speeches, overwhelms couples before the marriage and often handicaps the real questions that need to be asked before they say their "I wills."

I think I have incredible marriage quality; perhaps it stems from the fact that we met on a Christian ministry team which traveled for seventeen months before we decided to get married.  Romance doesn't usually blossom in a minibus pulling a trailerful of musical equipment, but for some reason, it did for us.

Our anniversary was this last week - we have been married for eighteen years, but every year on August 15th (August 9th is our wedding anniversary) I celebrate the first day I met Christine.  Some may find it sappy that I know this, but at the risk of grossing out both my in-laws and relatives, the first day I saw Christine was memorable.

Vikki, my sister, and I were traveling back from the annual trip from Canada where she was going to drop me off at the church where our training was to occur.  Since I would be on the road for seventeen months, I had a few things packed, but as Vikki and I drove those endless miles from Thunder Bay to Minneapolis, talked about all sorts of things including my girlfriend at the time (who doubled as a friend of Vikki's also). 

We pulled into the parking lot of the church and as Vikki turned the car key to cut the car's engine, a vision of loveliness walked by outside her car.  Through the windshield I noticed this long-legged beauty in her short shorts, blue top and braided hair.  My mouth must have been agape because Vikki looked over at me and said,

"Don't even think about it."

So I met Christine twenty years ago today.  She was the first person I saw on our ministry band and the first (and only) person that filled the empty parking space reserved for 'spouse.'

Marriage quality is not just about sharing all the good things, but even more so all the troubles.  What cements a marriage is not the vacations, but the daily grind which smoothes splintery roughness of life.  The daily grind is where we spend most of our lives and yet far too often it is the daily grind which seems to be what couples attempt to avoid.

So, as I reflect on my own twenty years of seeing Christine in new and reflected lights, I ponder anew the goodness of God who first instituted the holy place of marriage.  I continue to pray that this generation, and the next, find fulfillment of God's love in marriage.