Reaping What We Sow
Kelli Parece (lay led)
UU Church of Wakefield
May 29, 2005

Good Morning, I think I am better with a hat on and a short announcement than I may be at this, however, I stand here at the pulpit today, because, I want to share some of an ongoing discussion I often have with my mother in reference to generational relationships.  – “You will reap what you sow, Kelli” she often says to me.  

You see, shortly after conceiving my first child, I began to be bombarded with all kinds of parenting choices, ones that will last a lifetime for each of my children. The past does have a way of bringing itself to the present.  Along with the new challenges and some dog-tired days of parenting 1, then 2, then 3 small children, I, of course, began to draw more intently on how I was parented, and grand-parented.  In general, I began to work at keeping patterns I thought were healthy and changing those I thought were not.  For example, I work at listening to the emotions of my children and giving as much choice as I can when appropriate (or at least an explanation).  I also negotiate often with my children when there is a conflict of opinion that does not involve safety, “picking my battles”!  Of course, implementing parenting ideas is sometimes easy and sometimes not.  A new parent learns very quickly to be humbled by what we thought “wrong” with our own parents.

I have a small exercise for you all if you will join me.  Please take a moment, sit as relaxed as you can and bring yourself back to a thought or two of how you were parented.  Was there a pattern of warm understanding with Dad or Mom? Was there a pattern of abandonment or mistrust with a parent? ---------------------------Now, bring yourself to the place that you became conscious of these patterns--------and now to the present.  How is your relationship now with that parent or caretaker (or how did it grow to be if that person is no longer with us)? ------------------------ And though life is woven with MANY different influences for a child and their parent(s), the individual choices that each parent chose to sow (on whatever level),   I have come to learn, for me, is what the parent will likely reap years later.  Now this is big stuff for the “not so pleasant” experiences in our lives.  It may very well be what has landed someone, like me, in therapy to sort it out.

I will speak a bit from my own experiences that brought this subject to a head for me. Wanting the relationship with my father and the one with his mother (my grandmother) to be something it is not is what kept raising the questions.  A little bit of background:  Ever since I can remember, my mother was ALWAYS loving and as present as she could be (amidst the chores and what it takes to raise 7 children and the chaos that ensues, I only know from the 3-children perspective). My father, on the other hand, though a spectacular breadwinner in his time, \fathered us with many now outdated expectations and was rarely present emotionally or physically to the family. My mother and father divorced when I was 10 after many years of an unhappy marriage from which 7 children were born, I’m #7. 

I am clear that, though it had it’s pain, now as an adult, I wholeheartedly support this divorce as I would not be the woman I am today if it did not happen.  So, while they were married and while they were not, of course, my mother and my father had individual parenting roles and patterns that affected my life. 

And this is what I want to hone in on further; how they are each reaping what they sowed, in their individual relationship with me (and I will venture to say what MY perspective of their relationships are with my siblings).  I will not drag you through too many unpleasant or even pleasant details, hopefully only enough to make myself clear. 
 
So, I first talk of my mother.  She called herself a “country-bumpkin wife”, one that jumped when called upon, running the household the best she knew how, and very well at that.  Now, aside from the marital patterns, I tell you SHE had and showed the strength and caring when it came to child rearing.  She would ditch the chores to attend to a crying child, she would literally “find” my teenage sister when she was out carousing and suspected that she could be in harm’s way, she marched into that principal’s office to demand a different schooling environment for my brother, she would give in to my desire to sleep over my friend’s next door for the 7th weekend in a row, and she hugged me lovingly when I returned to the kitchen one day to apologize after I had yelled “I hate you” and retreated to my room on my own to calm down.  As a young girl, for me, her intent and work for MY life (and my siblings’) was clear.

My father on the other hand, sowed something very different.  So much of how I related with him (or I should say, NOT related with him) was based on fear, one that he created in an authoritative, unemotional way.  He would control us children’s behavior at the dinner table with his eyes, staring us down. He often preached, “Do as I say, not as I do”. And he was not  a willing parent when it came to supporting his children’s activities; more like he went because my mother dragged him and would remind him that it mattered.   I do NOT remember empathetic explanations of why I should be expected to behave in a certain way, it was clear to me that I just had to based on fear of an unknown.  Though I have heard and used “tyrant” as a way to describe some of his behaviors, he does have other positive morals and life skills that got passed along to us kids. The lack of sowing an emotional part in his relationship with me is what has been the most difficult. 

And I bring this full circle, as I mentioned earlier I am speaking mostly of sowing and reaping a generational relationship (though sowing and reaping happens in many of life’s relationships).  I share with you what has been difficult to realize, but does make sense is that each my father and my mother is reaping what they have sown. For me, the relationship now with my father is about obligatory visits a few times a year, mostly to create time for my children to have a chance to develop a relationship with their grandfather (a relationship that I know, from my own experience with my Great Grandmother, is not one for me to decide but to provide some environment for it to develop).  

I have little desire to “hang out”, nor does HE seem to want that /  as there is not too much there that we connect about.  I am sad that our relationship, for me is not as “full” as I would like it to be and I continue to work with that reality.  

On the other end of the spectrum, my mother also reaps what she sowed in the relationships with her children.  She has a connection with each of us 7 children, makes time and occasions to be in our and our childrens’ company, as do we with her.   It was not too much of a chore to help her cleanout and move from her home last fall;   though family work, it was actually a very wholehearted task complete with some sweat, fun memories and  sad ones too, providing time for siblings and Mom to be in each others company several times in one month.  Now, driving 40 minutes to stop in is always worth the trip for either of us, we even go out of our way to carpool so as to have more together time.  I thoroughly enjoy the adult relationship I have with her, whether it is a date to shop at Building 19, a chat over an adult dinner date, or her company to help me out with the kids’ bedtime and chat away into the evening.  

I realize that this topic of sowing and reaping is not as simple as sowing a seed and reaping the expected fruit from that seed at harvest season.  How we come to belief systems and what we do with those  beliefs as adults will affect our parenting.  The sowing includes self-work, realizing errors, explanations and maybe apologies as well as sharing joy and information.  Life is full of stress, unexpected events, and the need to sustain energy for the everyday of parenting that may alter any moment of parenting. 

At this point, I believe it is what we sow, whether with conscious intent or unconscious ignorance, in our relationships with our children that will likely be what we reap in return years later.  

 I thank you for this opportunity

CLOSING WORDS:  #502

Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season.

It is today that our best work can be done and not some future day or future year.

It is today that we fit ourselves for the greater usefulness of tomorrow.

Today is the seed time, now are the hours of work, and tomorrow comes the harvest and the playtime.

W.E.B. DuBois