English
EspañolA parent´s love for a difficult child can reach heroic levels. It is not an exotic occurrence, for it happens every day, everywhere. They are relationships of love that entail great suffering, types of love that, in their ordeal, manifest the human greatness of a father and a mother – Painful and glorious mysteries of love.
Text
“We could also point to the presence in many families of a capacity for selfless and loving service when children prove troublesome and even ungrateful. This makes those parents a sign of the free and selfless love of Jesus.” (The Joy of Love, n.162)
Commentary
They were a family that had minor issues. They were delighted, and that was what mattered most. Besides, they had beautiful children, all of them good. Until… one of them, Luis, nineteen years old, spoke to everyone to let them know he was leaving home to live with his girlfriend. He wanted nothing to do with marriage, not even in the future. He talked to his parents and each of his siblings. It was useless. How could they have imagined that Luis would leave the family home and do it “just like that”? What had happened to Luis, the excellent student, cheerful, helpful, and affectionate son.
The previous example is a frequent and not particularly dramatic case. There are more challenging and more prolonged ones; for example, severe drug addiction and conflictive divorces divide families into irreconcilable tribes and deprive children of having a warm, united, and peaceful home. We parents must be clear that love is one thing and “being right” is another, and then we must teach this difference with temperance and affection. No matter how much we love our children, there are circumstances in which we cannot tell them they are right. Telling them they are wrong and not excusing their bad behavior is not equivalent to taking back our love and affection for them. On the contrary, knowing how to maintain, and even multiply, the love and the affectionate environment will be fundamental when it is necessary to tell them their behavior is wrong or have made the wrong decision, decisions you do not agree with at all.
There are situations in life where children can give us ungrateful surprises without intending to and then persist in their attitude. How do parents then look at that child? Do we look at him differently than the rest, as “less of a child”? Do we distance ourselves from them? For his parents, Luis continued to be “their son,” the same one he had always been, and their affection for him did not change. Even though he did not understand, even though he distanced himself, they continued loving him all the same.
