Parent as student: A post-holiday reflection
By Dr. Kathy Coffey-Guenther, senior mission and Ignatian leadership specialist
Perhaps some of us still have the final lingering days of our college student’s presence in our homes: laundry in the machine, large grocery lists and bags being packed for the return to school this weekend!
Wherever we find ourselves in this process of Christmas break, I invite you to take a moment with me to savor the memories and learnings of the past few weeks when our students returned to our homes and families for as much time as their growing schedules allow.
As a senior, our daughter needed to return to school to begin an internship right at the first of the year. Having been through the post-holiday chaos and let-down of her return to school before, I knew that I needed some time to light a candle and savor the moments of the past weeks with her — both those that were amazingly positive, and those that were a bit challenging.
This year, I used our Ignatian pedagogical paradigm, my framework for savoring these times. The paradigm, or IPP for short, is a process of learning that comes from the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, and that under girds transformational learning at our Jesuit schools.
Professors in Jesuit universities implement the IPP in their teachings by using context, experience, reflection, action and evaluation as a means of helping students to learn not only superficial concepts, but to learn in ways that will move and form their hearts and spirits as well as their minds.
The IPP helps us to process deeply so that our learning impacts us from the inside out, inspiring us to discern new paths of thinking and acting, and to confirm goodness in our lives and in the world.
As I was savoring the time with my daughter over Christmas Break, I used the five elements of the IPP as my lens to more deeply understand who she has become, and who I have become, and who we have become as a family- together and apart during these years of her Catholic and Jesuit education.
I began by thinking about context: the “who” my daughter was, the “who” I was and the “who” my husband was when she started her college journey. Touchstone memories from her first year to today influenced and informed all of us as we each experienced life deeply in new and differing circumstances. I was blessed with special memories of her visit this Christmas that bonded our family in celebration and deep appreciation for the “who” our family has become, and for the ways each of us has been shaped as individuals, and made space for one another over this time.
I then imagined the experiences that our daughter has had during her college days, and the ways in which she invited us to share in her memory of those experiences. I could remember our concern, including late nights worrying, and then great celebrations and joyous moments as she shared so many learnings and opportunities — big and little — that our daughter had both on campus and abroad, in the classroom and beyond the classroom, and how these experiences and people she has met on the way have shaped her sense of self, faith and purpose in the world.
I reflected in my body, heart, mind and spirit what these past few years have brought to our daughter — the love she has experienced, the people who have supported her and helped heal her when we were not near, the lifelong friends she has made, the families that have taken her in for good meals and weekends away as needed, and the faculty mentors on campus and at internships that have helped her gain a sense of who she can be in the world.
I marvel at the many ways our daughter has encountered God and Christ through God’s people’s love and care for her. I celebrated the sense of who she is becoming as she discerns God’s path and call to her, with the love and care and guidance of Mary and Jesus along the way.
I considered the varying actions that I have taken, that my husband has taken and that our daughter has taken during these years. I can see clearly that some of my actions in our early years were driven by my fears, my difficulty in letting go, and mostly, my difficulty in trusting that my daughter was acting in accordance with her faith and vocational call and her values and inspiration. My reflection on my actions has reaffirmed my knowing that Ignatius’ teachings on the power of anxiety to distract us from the power of good, the power of love and the power of the Holy at work in our lives continue to be true. I am only glad that my daughter — with a sense of curiosity and courage — allowed her free spirit and open heart to guide her, despite the challenges that might have made in our relationship on occasion.
Lastly, I evaluated how well we had navigated our daughter’s college experience, the growing pains and the lessons learned these past years. And while I might have changed a few things related to my early reactions along the way, and while I wish that life might have dealt us some easier cards as a family over this time, I come away today truly blown away with a full heart and a sense of peace and energy and inspiration.
As parents, when we send our students to Catholic and Jesuit universities to experience a transformational education that will help prepare them to be good people and leaders who will impact the world, we may not remember that we, too, are invited to be part of this institutional mission. We, too, are part of this transformational growing, learning, loving and living.
We may not be perfect parents each day on the journey, and we don’t need to be. We just need to stay open and curious — to stay prayerful and present, and to make sure we set some time aside to savor the beauty of each of us growing independently and together with this God, who has created us and who continues to lovingly tend to us.
Each of us are invited on this dynamic journey of living and learning. This transformational call of St Ignatius to find God in all things never ends!
In savoring this time of Christmas blessings, I found the power of love and grace, of independence and family, of call and response. I have found God and God’s love in every amazing moment of this journey!
I invite you to take some moments of savoring time as well! See how God is accompanying you, your student and your family in awesome ways as well!
And look around — you will see the other Marquette families on this journey as well. See you there!
