The architect must be a prophet... a prophet in the true sense of the term... if he can't see at least ten years ahead don't call him an architect.Frank Lloyd Wright
The same must be true in parenting also. Architect, one who shapes and builds. Prophet, one who sees the form before the build.
With the complexities of culture changing and evolving, media shaping perspectives and acceptabilities and a world moving much too fast, it is more than easy to get lost in parenting techniques. It seems as though many strategies given to assist and guide good parenting are geared more to contain the child in good behavior rather than preparing to unleash them into the life waiting for them.
And more so everyday, I am convinced that it is the latter parental ambition that should be reached for.
An architect must have a plan to raise a structure from a brick to a building. It is no more luck than it is chance.
Buildings are not just built. They are constructed by design and with intentional, planned effort. Careful attention is given to measurements and incremental values that may seem insignificant to those simply observing the structure being built, but the architect marries himself to the details for he knows that the future, the success and the strength of what he is building lies in the attentive detail to the parts forming the whole to be. It is not so much the exterior that the architect is concerned with. He is painstakingly obsessed with the structure from the inside out. Even when the eventual outside will boast of innovative design and personal genius, the inside must be correct, inch by inch and detail by detail.
Much like parenting in techniques, I’m sure it is quite easy for an architect to reduce his genius to a builder of buildings rather than one who sees the form before the build and raises a structure to life.
The architect must be a prophet who sees not only a finished product but a form finding purpose and significance now while belonging still to the future ahead.
Is this not parenting also?
The parent must be a prophet... who builds now based on what he has glimpsed ahead, carefully building, constructing and reinforcing, the child for the life ahead of them.
...a prophet in the truest sense of the term ...if he can’t see at least ten years ahead don’t call him a parent.
For me, and I assume the same for you as a parent, if I am merely conditioning my daughters to react to ‘yes’ and ‘no’ and right and wrong - giving attention to formless details rooted in immediate response and good behavior - what confident hope do I have that my daughters will one day become all that they can be?
I am trying to rid myself of attitudes aiming at quick, get in line, kind of behavior and reaching to be the parent unleashing them, exposing them and preparing them for the life ahead. I want them to live with a deep, intrinsic sense of purpose in life, hearts burning with passion and form strong enough to stand.
I don’t have the answers.
I’m often more confounded by the trivial than confident as a parent, often more lost stumbling insecurely than always strongly leading them, often saying things I don’t necessarily mean in emotion and anger than speaking love and truth often worried that it all won’t be enough than faithfully putting seeds in the soil of their heart often ill concerned with the exterior, what others might think, than diligently tightening bolts within their loose little hearts
...so I pray for prophet eyes to see ahead, the possibility of all they can become, and I glimpse the form of God’s hand lifting dust into life.
It is there that I try to parent from the most. I speak to them as if they have an already accepted day ahead that they belong to, not in terms of a career choice for them, but in a life where they live now leading them to the who, what, when, where, why and how of it all. As a parent with prophet eyes, I share with them the significant glimpse and together we spy God together and the reason holding within them reveals clearly.
The vision holding in my heart for each of my girls is a day when I will let them go from my hand into another day.
We will look into each others eyes, they will not wilt, as she says goodbye to only my daughter and embraces the woman she has been becoming.
That day will be familiar as I will have visited it often by then, crossing the line of present to future, creating and shaping them from there.
*an innovative design of Frank Lloyd Wright calling from years ahead of its build