Hold On to Them

This morning I was thinking about a play I watched with my students last month entitled, "Mother Hicks."   It was an excellent UVU Noorda Theatre production and I was unexpectedly surprised at our students appropriate theatre behavior.  As such, I actually listened to and enjoyed the play set in the era of the Great Depression.  There was one scene that particularly moved me to tears.  My students were curious about my tears and I made up some lame explanation of why I was crying. I've had a little time to mull it over in my mind and wanted to flesh it out this morning in my blog.

The dialog takes place between the main character and her past foster care parent she finds living as a hobo with his son.  She had originally been abandoned because this family could not longer afford to take care of her. She discovers her foster siblings have been pawned off to various families to care for them or work for them. The dialogue ensues, "You had a family but you just threw it all away. "  The desolate looking father replies, "I just couldn't hold on to them. "  She shoots back, "You could have held on to them."  As she walks away and he asks where she is going, she states, "What do you care?"

Perhaps the power of the scene came from identifying closely with the  "thrown away" little girl and also the forlorn, trodden down man.  I've been working with a handful of students for the past 5 years that have been similarly abandoned- thrown away children with failed adoptions that nobody wants back because they are too dangerous and unstable; or a little girl who was literally thrown in a garbage dumpster; or severely traumatized children taken away by social services with parents who "couldn't hold on" to their own children because of drugs, neglect, or physical or sexual abuse rendering the child's environment unsafe.  Yet parent and child yearn for each other, even if it's subconsciously.  The child's pain of being discarded-for whatever reason and how it affects their ability to trust and care for others.  The parent's despair that they were unable to care for their children and keep them close.  It's a desolate scene played out daily in social services.

I probably identified more with the father.  As he explained the various locations of his would be family, I thought of my own children-where they are-what they are doing.  Who is taking care of them or how they are learning to take care of themselves.  Though they are now all technically "adults" learning to take care of themselves, I will always want to care for them in some form or fashion.  They are my children I'm desperately trying to "hold on to"  not just for this life but throughout the eternities.

I picture clasped hands as a child dangles over a deep abyss-"don't let him fall." How both parent and child desperately seek to "hold on."  Don't let go.  Not only gravity, but entropy, the gradual decline of order, threatens to tear us apart; separating families forever.  Destruction of the family into chaos is ever present.  The temple is like a great celestial observatory-not only see what's coming (impending cosmic doom) but to prepare for it with it's opposite-creation and order.  The ordinances-to put in order-to seal together families.  The temple and the gospel of Jesus Christ give us everything we need to help us "hold on to" our precious families.  I don't want my children to walk away shaking their heads and accusing me of "not caring."  I care.  I'm committed to hold on to them.  And though I do not have super-human strength, I have access to someone who does...Jesus Christ.  It is his strong arm in whom I can trust to strengthen my resolve to "hold on."