Overcoming Self-centered Fear

By the time you read this everything will be different. All the moments I am about to describe will have passed, but right now, right now there is a friend getting ready to put on her wedding dress, another prays for her child to live, yet another boards a plane for a funeral. In this moment I am standing at a traffic light on my way to work as one driver rages and honks at the other from their car. While all this is happening my mind floods with both thoughts and emotions in reaction to each of these events. All the emotions come at once and I bring to mind my own circumstances, the things in my own life I am grappling with. Through my headphones Chris Tomlin is singing, "How Great Is Our God."

Cheerleader Who Supports

I was a cheerleader in high school and loved it. I wasn't much into the formations or building elaborate pyramids, but I loved cheering on our team at the games. I loved getting the crowd excited because I believed that if we could be loud enough together, we could give our team the boost, the momentum, the something extra they might need to get the job done and win the game. Our job was to keep the crowd behind the team no matter what.

Now, years later I am living my life and standing on the sidelines in my children's lives, learning to perfect a role I first learned about as a teenager. More than one set of parents I spoke to stressed that one of the biggest roles we play as parents is that of cheerleader in our adult child's life. It's a normal, built-in desire to know that our parents are proud of us, that they believe in us and that Mom and Dad have our backs no matter what!