Sterling's Truths for Life #9

Explanation

The value of a child is inestimable. I have heard it argued that “every child should be a wanted child.” How ignorant. How awful. Every child is wanted. Every child is valuable. Anyone who does not like children has a disease and is sick. Anyone who wants to harm children or prevent their birth by violent means is wicked. If all you see is an inconvenience, an expense, you are a selfish, shallow person. Shame on you.

A child can soften the hardest of hearts. A child can teach an immature adult maturity. Children demonstrate the beauty of innocence. Children take us to places we didn’t know we needed to go. There are so many lessons that adults miss or fail to be reminded of when they are not surrounded by them.

Having an infant in the home can teach patience and selflessness in a way almost no other situation can come close. The belly laughter of a twelve-month-old can heal the soul of many hurts. The screaming demands of a small child are hard to ignore and teach sympathy.

School-age children are less immediately demanding, but require a different level of maturity. They have questions, so many questions. Often their questions are things that make an adult say, “Why haven’t I ever thought about that before? What is the answer?” The questions of a child sharpen the adult and I think do more for adult brain health than any online subscription.

Teenagers turn this quest for knowledge into a quest for wisdom as they pass through the awkward transition: are they children or are they adults or both at once or neither? They struggle and if you walk alongside young teens and work with them to become adults, you’re reminded of your own struggles and growth. You grow up all over again, which is something most adults could use a good healthy dose of again and again.

Young adult children reward you again as you see them move into life and become what you’ve hoped and dreamed, building lives and families of their own. If you’ve done well, their independence, even their struggles, become a reward in itself. The effort has not been in vain.

Then, as we ourselves age and begin to hurt and ache and our bodies begin the slow decline to failure, children become a new blessing. They return to help you. Those without children will have no one to care for them. They will have no one to visit them when their friends are old and infirm and gone. They will have no grandchildren to bring joy into their life when their fingers can no longer work their hobbies. They are alone and will be totally dependent on the charity of others.

Children bring joy, they bring maturity, they bring reward, they bring care.

Children are always a blessing.

Children. Are. Always. A. Blessing.