Feeling Feelings

It was a strange morning.  I was putting clean dishes away as my five year old son was making up fart jokes. 

(We’ll take a moment for those of you without sons…)

He finds a picture of my in-laws’ scottish terriers that died last year and got really sad.

We talked about how he misses them and about how they were really good dogs.

He sat on the kitchen floor looking at their picture for five minutes. 

To say my son is empathetic is an understatement.  From birth, he has hurt with those who are hurting and rejoiced with those who are rejoicing. 

It does my heart good to see that my son isn’t embarrassed by his emotions. 

By and large, there seems to be only two ways men raise sons.  We teach them either to perfect their poker face or run for the hills.

When I would get hit by a pitch my dad would yell, “You rub it, you’re out!” 

We hear “Walk it off” and “Rub some dirt on it.” 

The message is the same.  Don’t feel your feelings. 

Men don’t hug.  We don’t cry.  We don’t hurt.

We’re kidding ourselves. 

Stuffing our emotions becomes natural and we unwittingly pass it on to our sons.

Well intentioned church people occasionally reinforce it.

Instead of mourning with someone, we offer platitudes.  Someone is struggling through a loss or recovering from emotional devastation and we plaster a smile on our faces and say, “God will take care of it” or, “Everything will work out.”

We’re too scared of emotions to face them, so we push them down...

Unless our dads taught us to run. 

The first sign of bad news has us reaching for the eject button. 

Families are hard so we devote our time to sports or hobbies instead. 

I’m a year into letting myself FEEL things and now I’m faced with a five year old who feels everything!

It’s both exhilarating AND frightening.

I knelt down and hugged him while we both remembered Ivan and Sampson.  I tried to stay quiet for a bit.  My immediate reaction was to remind him that dogs die.  THAT would have been good.  Part of me wanted him to forget those dogs and remember Aunt Sarah’s NEW dog!

Instead, we hugged in front of the dishwasher.  My son was sad and that’s ok.  Sometimes we’re sad.  My son was mourning and that’s ok.  Sometimes we mourn. 

I thanked God for teaching me a lesson on the kitchen floor.

I’m called to walk my son across the tightrope of masculinity and emotion when I still feel like I need a safety net.

And now he’s back to the fart jokes.

I love having a son!