This person has a future.
Years ago I led a mother's support
group. I introduced topics each week and we talked about our kids to people who truly cared. We laughed, and wept over the daily struggles intrinsic to parenting. One time I was especially exhausted by my son's relentless arguing, and his ability to wear me down anytime I tried to hold fast to house rules. I tossed out a question.
"What do you picture your child being like as an adult? How will her character serve her?"
It grew out of the
thought that my son would be a crackerjack attorney, one I could easily see dominating the courtroom. Each mother began to imagine her son or daughter in a larger arena. The girl who cried easily over a crushed flower or broken tea cup could be an empathetic social worker. The boy who had boundless energy and kicked soccer balls in the living room might excel in athletics.
I remembered sitting next to Curtis twelve years ago in a class on Divine Providence. I
was getting my masters and he was working on his undergrad degree. He struck me as introverted, even melancholy. Once or twice I tried to start a conversation with him but it didn't pan out.
A decade later I had the chance to sit in his audience, and listen with a few thousand other people to his engaging and insightful presentation. I feel like he has leaped into the fast lane in a Porche, while I am plodding along at twenty miles an hour in an old
minivan.
Entertaining the thought that our partner has a future can elevate us out of the ankle high perspective of today, and begin to glimpse the trajectory that reaches past the horizon.
