Not to burst your bubble, but......

We all have our protective bubbles in which we raise our children.

These bubbles protect us and them from the onslaught of toxic physical, emotional, theological and judgmental insults from the world while we try to raise decent little human beings.

Our family’s bubble is made up of our values, our beliefs, our preferences and comforts.

It is a nice safe place to raise our children while they’re little. It’s worthwhile and effective. As they get older, it begins to stretch and change shape as the children grow and question, and test. At this stage it is still possible to reinforce the bubble and keep it strong. The older ones eventually reach the ceiling of the bubble and continue to test it, pushing and stretching as they go. The little ones coming up no longer have the closeness of the protective bubble around them, but it’s still there, albeit altered slightly from the stretching.

One day, however the inevitable happens. One of the kids breaks through the bubble. The whole family’s safety zone is altered. The bubble’s structure eventually collapses, and the remnants fall all around us to the ground. It becomes harder and harder to keep a protective barrier up between our children and the insanity of the world outside. Even harder still to shield the younger ones from the newly acquired thoughts and ideas of the older ones. This is when we are forced to move outside our own comfort bubbles and start answering the hard questions about what made up our bubble in the first place. The bubble served its purpose, no doubt, and protected our offspring as long as it could, but at some point, in most family’s lives, the bubble dissolves, pops or collapses and we can only hope that the remnants have soaked deeply into the soil from which our older and “wiser” family can grow.

This can be a sad and frightening time for a parent. We may think that all our hard work was for naught, and nothing we tried to instill in them will be there anymore, but that is not true. The remnants of our protective bubble become the foundation, and the foundation we laid is never gone completely. New things will be built upon it, and it may look a little different and sound a little different from what we put there in the first place, but if we filled that bubble with some nuggets of truth and goodness and love, it will still be there. It will take on its own form in the children we raised.  

 I have learned the hard way that as much as we may long for the days of our little ones tucked safely and securely inside our bubble, it can’t last forever in the real, big, grown-up world, so adapt and adjust we must. I will not ever give up on my beliefs and values nor will I give up on trying to instill them in my children, and hopefully someday my grandchildren, but it’s no longer my place to build a bubble for them. It is now my place to replenish, restore, and love. I hope they can always come to me for the comfort of that safe place, bubble or not.