A Lot of Too Much

Tonight I included the people of Somalia in our bedtime prayers, and of course all I heard was a chorus of, "What's Somalia?"

As soon as we all said 'amen,' I brought out a large book of continents we have, where each continent is a puzzle. (Thanks, Aunt Connie!) The kids love this book to the moon and back, and they definitely know their continents. (As well as all of the states in the U.S. and all of the countries of Europe. Including those tricky Eastern Bloc countries. My two-year-old has a better grip on geography than I do.) I opened it to the Africa page, accompanied by many little voices saying, "Africa!", and found Somalia, showing it to everyone. Because really, we are all visual. We need to see to fully understand.

So I explained, as basically as possible, what is wrong in Somalia, and why we should pray, and what we should pray about. The kids' had your typical kid solutions to a typically ridiculous grown-up problem: Why can't we give them our food? I can bring them my water. I can give them peanut butter sandwiches and strawberries and turkey. And I had the typical clunky grown-up answers to simple, yet effective, kid solutions: It's really not that simple. There are bad people who make it hard. I don't know why other kids have to die. We can't just give them your lunch, sweetheart. The Church and lots of others are doing what they can, and Mama and Daddy do what they can, too.

We then prayed again, this time specifically for Somalia, and then settled down for slumber. As I began tucking everyone in, I silently patted myself on the back for quietly introducing my kids to the world at large. They are, I admit, pretty sheltered, which is how it should be when you are 4 and 2. Right now a large portion of my job description reads "shelter," and that word has multi-faceted meanings. But they can start learning, in little bite-sized bits, how fortunate they are, how bad things can be, how we need to pray and do and act and love, as Christ has taught us. Plus it gives me a great opportunity to impress upon them how well-fed we are and how they should be thankful for every bit of food put in front of them, even that bit of green that they hate, thankyouverymuch.

I congratulated myself on teaching them a little bit about discomfort. And then I bent down to B in his bottom bunk, saw his eyes, and wondered if I had made a grave miscalculation.




I've told you before that B is incredibly sensitive. The thing is, just saying "incredibly sensitive" does not even begin to penetrate the depth of his sensitivity. I doubt that I, as his mother, especially as no-nonsense and low-emotion a person as I am, can ever know just how tender this kid is. He is butter to the core, and his eyes were filled with tears as he, in his childish, four-year-old heart pondered the issue of starvation in Somalia.

Oh, dang. Whoops. This is not a one-size-fits-all-situation. My other two kids, they're sensitive enough. They are caring, kind individuals who, when they aren't being typical siblings, do a fabulous job of taking care of one another and other people. But B? He feels. So very very deeply. So deeply that sometimes I worry he won't be able to cope, won't be able to process his emotions, won't be able to interact with the larger world because it just might be TOO. MUCH.

So while J and King Peter the Boy will offer their sandwiches to the kids of Somalia and wonder out loud why we can't give them our food, they will still be able to sleep tonight. They will cope. They realize that they can do nothing beyond what Mama and Daddy can, and so all there is left to do is rest. But my second son, my sweet B, may very well lay awake for a long time, sick at the thought of sick and dying children (yes, we talk about dying sometimes--we do not fear death) who just need to eat. He will, no doubt, bring it up early tomorrow morning, perhaps at breakfast. We will keep talking about it, as we should, and B will keep worrying and worrying and feeling and feeling and asking a thousand questions and needing a thousand hugs.

I never know how much is too much for him. Loud noises make him skittish. Loud people make him quail. This weekend we went to the zoo in Chicago, and at a playground B was scared off of a slide by a loud, rough-and-tumble kid who was standing at the top of the play structure, yelling at the top of his lungs, oblivious to everyone around him. B ran to me crying, unable to cope with perceived anger. If I raise my voice at all in the house, even just to call for far-off kids, B bursts into tears and gulps, "You scared me!" We have to carefully screen movies for dramatic moments: the deaths of Nemo's mother and siblings is enough to send him over the edge. As an infant he was particularly sensitive to change, even minor fluctuations, like a different fan in the room or the wrong blanket, and traveling with B as a baby was a tiresome experience. As a little boy he is greatly improved, but he is still extremely adverse to change, especially when it involves people he loves leaving his company. New ventures have to be carefully explained in exact detail before he can process them, and even then we have to use a numbering system so that he can easily remember just what we're doing where, when, and with whom: "#1 we're going to the bank, #2 is Target, #3 is meeting Daddy for lunch, and #4 is going back home." Woe betide the mama who throws a curve in the numbering system by visiting Starbucks in between numbers 3 and 4.

I'm just trying to give you a taste of how intensely sensitive this kid is. We've learned, for the most part, how to handle B, at least at this point in his little life, and we are always trying to better understand him. We want to nurture and engage and help mold this sensitivity, because far from being a weakness, as society might tell us, it is a wonderful gift. Perhaps I said it best last year, in another post about B:

His sensitivity is a gift, a precious, precious gift. While it is immature and frustrating and even ridiculous now, how will it manifest itself when he is a grown man? If we (with the Lord's sure hand) do it right, he'll be a servant, able to deeply relate to people and share in their hardships, quietly suffering with the less fortunate, faithfully serving his wife and children by always being aware of their needs. If I (God forbid) were to belittle him, tear him down, call him a "sissy" or worse, I could do serious damage. I don't even want to think about how so many children are indeed treated this way. I will do my part by honoring my son and my Lord.

And so by introducing Somalia and its ills to my sweet son, I have also given myself another challenge: Effectively address these terrible things, while hopefully instilling in him a deep love of others, without crushing his already tender nature with too much. Because when you're four, there is a lot of Too Much out there. And when you're a four-year-old B, there is a lot a lot of Too Much out there.
 
When I met B's big, tear-filled eyes, I understood that he was going over my information and thinking about it very, very deeply. It's hard to know just what bothers him most, the idea of sick kids or the understanding that, hey, not everyone is happy, what if someday I am sick and suffering, too? So I did what I could just then: I hugged him and told him that he was fine, that Mama and Daddy were here for him, that Mama and Daddy would worry about Somalia, that all he needed to do was pray and remember those people. I arrogantly promised that he would always have food, because really. I can do that. We aren't going to starve (save some terrible, world-wide disaster), and we live in a rich nation. I stroked his face and whispered reassurances, and then I quickly and quietly prayed that Jesus would grant him peace in his tender little heart.
 
And then I hugged him one more time and left the room.
 
And then I wrote this blog post.
 
And now I am going to go hug him one more time again.