The other day, E and I were walking home from the bus and having a great conversation. It started with a mention of the song he sang with the kid’s choir in church on Sunday, an arrangement of the Petula Clark song, “My Love” (My love is warmer than the warmest sunshine…). The guy who arranged it changed it so that the kids were singing about God. He did this by replacing every “my” with “His.” I told what a good job he’d done, and then admitted that as I sang along in my head on Sunday, I replaced ever “His” with “God’s.” We talked about inclusive language and the reason I specifically chose to use “Herself” as the one pronoun for God in my sermon that day. We discussed why only replacing “He” with “God” doesn’t work, because of underlying assumptions. This lead us off onto a great discussion about prejudice and bias and the images that pop into our minds (ie if you just say “God,” people will still think male–just like most white people, if you say “a guy was walking down the street,” will automatically picture a white guy). In the middle of all this, I said something about pushing people a little to re-think things, to go a little outside their comfort zones, and E stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and gave me a big hug.
“That’s why I love you so much,” he said.
“Why,” I replied, “because I push people?”
“Yes!”
Well, then. Just another example of how amazing this kid is. At just shy of 12 years old, five and a half months into his pre-adoptive placement, he is able to love me not just as his mom, but for the person I am outside of that role, AND express that sentiment. Heck, there are many kids out there who don’t get to that point until their 20s, if ever!
And that’s one of the many reasons I love him.
birch & raven 