An open letter to my 16 year old Granddaughters
As I write this, one of you is 6 years and one of you is 6 months old. What possible advice or guidance can an old man give about a future he is unable to imagine? Well, as to advice, as a 16 year old girl, avoid all 16 year old boys. As a recovering 16 year old I can tell you they are up to no good! And for that matter 17 and 18 year old boys are even worse.
As to guidance through life, I can tell you only one thing of importance. God thinks you are the most wonderful, special, gifted creation of all time. But that’s not a miracle. Your parents feel the same way about you. So do I, so do your Grandmothers. The miracle comes later.
Now I know you have heard all about God’s love from your earliest moments. It is on billboards, and in books and all around us. We all know it, we just don’t believe it. If we did we would behave in a different way. Maybe this very simple example will help explain what I mean.
When I first learned to drive, I was taught to always look in the rearview mirror before pulling out into traffic. Dad must have told me that 500 times, I wrote it on the driving test; I could tell anyone who asked, “Look before pulling out.” I knew it, I just didn’t believe it.
Then one early morning along route 23 in Windom Township, I jumped into my car, never glanced in the mirror and pulled out in front of a tractor trailer. Only through the great skills of the truck driver do either of you exist. For the next 45 years I never failed to check the mirror before pulling out. I had gone from knowing to believing. When I believed, I behaved differently, I understood differently.
When you truly understand God loves you, you see things through a whole new set of eyes. For the first 60 years of life, I lived in fear. What if I couldn’t pay the bills? What if these people didn’t like me? What if I made a mistake, what if I didn’t get invited or got lost or didn’t know what to say? Often I was so scared, my mind left my body and I just stood there totally mute. And I was my own worst critic. Nothing I did was good enough. I wasn’t a good enough son, or husband or teacher or father or friend or person.
Then, for a lot of good reasons, most my own fault, I reached a very dark place. And perhaps because I was totally defeated, God was able to work miracles within me and I came to not just know that God loved me, but to believe God loved me.
The world began to look different. If God loved me, I was good enough. And more importantly, so was everyone and everything else, even the people I was mad at, or I didn’t like. And all the lizards and snakes and insects and crawly things that I had avoided, were good enough, because God thought they were.
And that is the great miracle of God! God feels the same way about every part and every molecule of his creation. He loves the fluffy little kitten, but he also loves the rat. He loves the poor suffering child, but he loves the virus that caused the suffering. If God feels that way about everything in his creation, how would I dare not feel the same?
Something else looks different as well. You will hear again and again when something is unexplainable that, “It is part of God’s plan.”If all the above is real and God is perfect love, then it is also true that God does not send hurricanes or childhood cancers or horrible family fights to his beloved children in order to teach them some lesson. Horrible things are the product of nature, or unlucky genes or our own human stupidity.
But God does use those things to work great wonders. As you age, you will be amazed at how many times great displays of love and compassion and healing come from great tragedies. Love, forgiveness, compassion and healing is God among us. Anything else is not God. Voices , no matter how loud or compelling, that proclaim God, but promote separation, judgment, hurt or punishment are not of God.
For now that is more than enough. Put this letter aside, and go and find your parents and tell them that just like God, you love them and appreciate everything they do for you. Even chasing those 16 year old boys away!