My Son Made Me Cry

I got into the car today with my husband as we went to Wal-Mart to pick up a few things. There on the floor was a paper from my son's American Government class in college that had fallen out of his book bag. I started to pick it up so that it wouldn't get stepped on and my husband said "you'd better read that. I think it will surprise you." So I did and was shocked by what I read. He had been assigned a paper on Political Socialization and had to limit it to two beliefs he held. Here is what he wrote:


"The ideas I hold in politics have always been an evolving thing. Over the years as I have matured in both age and reasoning so have the beliefs I hold. Some of these beliefs have changed a lot; some not so much. Now tracing back where I got these beliefs and ideas, my "political socialization", has not been easy. I have had many influences in my life that have adjusted and changed these beliefs as time has moved on, but I had to find two beliefs I could try to pinpoint. So for this I ended up choosing abortion and gun control.

Now I'm against abortion and my beliefs on this go back to when I was young. As you might guess I come from a Christian family with moral beliefs that it is wrong. Also you would be right in tracing many of my ideas when it comes to life and abortion back to that. My parents raised me to respect life especially human life and raised me to believe that human life starts at conception. I remember this from my earliest years, my mom especially held these beliefs. But you would be wrong to generalize so far as to thinking that is the only reason. I actually have a much more personal reason for that as well. You see when my mother was pregnant with me she had a good career in the army going and many of her friends told her just to abort me so I wouldn't get in the way. Well as you can see she disagreed and dropped the career instead. She told me about this when I had gotten old enough to understand and it just stuck with me. I could never have been given a chance in this world and life just because I was too much of a bother for someone and that has never sat well with me. So as you can well see, you might say I have a personal reason for my beliefs . . ."

He then goes on to talk about gun control and how it fits with his beliefs. The thing is that I didn't tell him that story about my pregnancy to be a hero. As a matter of fact I revealed that for a short period it had been hard even though I knew what was right. What I was trying to show him was that even when we know what's right doing right can be hard. Even though I kept thinking no I won't this is wrong, Satan brought a lot of people in to tempt and confuse me. It wasn't until I spoke my convictions aloud that peace came and I ceased to be tempted.

I don't know what it is about speaking it aloud that caused that to happen but it did and it's biblical because the bible tells us that that is what we have to do. That was the lesson that I was trying to teach my son. Somehow speaking it aloud confirms it in our mind. That he took so much more to heart remained unknown to me until I read his paper.

I walked in the house and said "Son, you made me cry." He looked at me with a shocked What-could-I-have-done look. His dad then told them that I had read his paper. He then got embarrassed and said 'You weren't supposed to read that, it must have fallen out of my bag." When I kissed him on the check he smiled that goofy little boy smile that he used to get when he had done something that pleased me. I haven't seen that smile in a long time.

Sometimes you spend a lot of time worrying about your kids and then sometimes they just blow you out of the water. Maybe he'll be alright after all.