"When you have kids of your own, then you'll understand." This was a common response to the many questions I had growing up whenever I didn't agree with my parents about something or whenever I didn't understand their point of view. I'd imagine this statement or some iteration of it can be heard across most every household in American at one time or another. Like so many of the predictable explanations parents regularly use on their children, this too seems to be true. However, one area of my life that I didn't expect to change after I became a parent was how I react to headline news. In short, I react much differently.
I remember standing in a Starbucks that I frequent on my way to work waiting for my order to be filled. As is my custom, I glanced through the copies of the New York Times and USA Today while waiting for my latte. It was on this day that I saw an image and headline that shocked me. The image was of a young Syrian boy, probably no more than 3 years old, lying dead on a beach in Turkey. The boy had died when the boat he and other refugees were on capsized while escaping a a civil war in their homeland. I had known about the Syrian civil war for years and had been learning of the growing refugee crisis, but this image impacted me in a way that I had never anticipated before. It haunted me for days. As a history teacher, I am used to seeing heartbreaking images from a bygone era that now fill the pages of our textbooks. However, never before had a single image of a tragedy hurt me so much. I was happy to get to work that day where I could think about something else. Today, I had that experience again. I saw a tweet late last night that a child had been attacked by an alligator at Walt Disney World resort. I clicked on the link and an error page popped up. Obviously, I didn't know much information, but I thought "that's horrible," continued with my evening and went to bed. This morning I learned more when I saw the headline on CNN. While wading in some water near a luxury resort, a two year old boy was attacked by an alligator. His father struggled to free him, but the animal dragged the toddler into the lagoon. Despite extensive search and rescue operations, the boy's body was not recovered until more than 15 hours later. I spent the entire day thinking about that poor boy and his parents. I've been to Disney World many times, I've walked very near the beach where the attack took place. I can't imagine how the parents must have felt. They were on a family vacation to the "The Happiest Place on Earth" and experienced something unimaginably horrific. The situation was entirely different and had little in common with the image of the Syrian child on the beach. However, the feeling I felt was exactly the same. I have discovered that since becoming a parent nearly two years ago, I'm affected by things differently than ever before. Obviously, we're all saddened when we hear about tragedy, regardless of whether or not we have children, but the kind of sadness I feel is certainly different than before I was a father. There is something about having a child of your own that changes the way you look at all children, in fact all people in general. If find myself far more sympathetic to the suffering of others, regardless of whether or not their situation has any real impact on me. You would do anything for your own child, which makes you want to do more for others. You understand the anxiety that you feel the first time your infant has a fever and you can't even comprehend the sense of helplessness and loss that a parent must feel when they lose a child to illness or accident. It's as if God uses parenthood to help us better understand love, compassion, empathy, and a plethora of other emotions. Perhaps He uses them to not only make us more human, but to draw us closer to Him and see the world as He sees it: heartbroken in times of suffering, joyful in times of celebration. Maybe none of this made any sense to you, but then again "you'll understand when you have kids of your own."
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Derek Trent AshcraftA place to discuss, among other things, politics, culture, food, faith, and nonsense. Archives
July 2021
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