{"id":428,"date":"2012-04-01T22:50:57","date_gmt":"2012-04-02T02:50:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/relwy\/?p=428"},"modified":"2012-11-02T20:17:17","modified_gmt":"2012-11-03T00:17:17","slug":"passion-for-ben","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/relwy\/2012\/04\/01\/passion-for-ben\/","title":{"rendered":"Passion, for Ben"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Lucy had a far-off soccer game, and Charlotte has a hacking cough, so it was just Ben and me this morning at St. John&#8217;s, to celebrate Palm Sunday and re-live the Passion. Ben didn&#8217;t complain that his sisters weren&#8217;t going with us. Ben&#8217;s only complaint&#8211;ever&#8211;is about practicing piano.<div id=\"attachment434\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/relwy\/files\/2012\/04\/IMG_3788.JPG\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment434\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/relwy\/files\/2012\/04\/IMG_3788-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"Ben with Easter treats, April 2011\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-434\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment434\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ben with Easter treats, April 2011<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n<p>Being at church with Ben is such a curious situation. I experience feelings of support, sympathy, pity, optimism and blessedness, all at once. If I&#8217;m at church without Ben, I&#8217;m barely noticed. With Ben, all eyes are on us. We are greeted, always so warmly, by Sister, who is genuinely delighted to see Ben, and doesn&#8217;t pat his head. She bends down to talk to him face-to-face and always asks him a meaningful question. Similarly, the priests smile, greet Ben, shake his hand or give him a high five. Today, the priest, recalling a conversation from at least 3 months ago, said, &#8220;I see you brought your most well-behaved child with you today!&#8221;. Shocked he remembered our talk from January, I had to agree&#8211;and had to marvel, once again&#8211; at how lucky we are to have Ben.<\/p>\n<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p><script>(function(d, s, id) {\r\n  var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];\r\n  if (d.getElementById(id)) return;\r\n  js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;\r\n  js.src = \"\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#xfbml=1\";\r\n  fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);\r\n}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));<\/script><\/p>\n<p>A couple months ago, when Charlotte, Lucy, Ben and I were all at church together, I  had my hands full. My kids are old enough to act decently, but Charlotte was clingy, and every time I helped Ben with something, she tried to interfere. Being at church has a very calming effect on me, so instead of doing what I&#8217;d do at home (scream, shout, add expletive here), I hugged her with one arm, Ben with the other, and even managed to give Lucy reaffirming squeezes to her hand every so often, as if to say, &#8220;I know you&#8217;re older and don&#8217;t need me to hug you, but I still love you&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Two really interesting things happened. One was that a woman sitting next to us told me what a joy it was to watch us in church. The other is that a woman sitting behind us gave me her card and said that if I ever needed any help with Ben, like meeting him at his busstop or helping him get to school, that I could call her and she would help me. Normally I would be quite skeptical about such an offer, but she confided that she had a son in his late twenties who uses a wheelchair, so she understood more than what I first gave her credit for.<\/p>\n<p>It would be easy for me to mistake these gestures and offers as being overly sympathetic or being done out of pity, but that would be wrong. Yet it&#8217;s what I would have done a few years ago. I can tell that I&#8217;m growing up, because now I bask in the compliment that I&#8217;m a competent mother, and I feel good that apparently I&#8217;m approachable enough for someone to offer help. It&#8217;s been a lot of big steps to get to this place. I know that people who compliment me and offer us help see that I feel passion for Ben. And what an appropriate day to share this than on the Lord&#8217;s Passion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lucy had a far-off soccer game, and Charlotte has a hacking cough, so it was just Ben and me this morning at St. John&#8217;s, to celebrate Palm Sunday and re-live the Passion. Ben didn&#8217;t complain that his sisters weren&#8217;t going with us. Ben&#8217;s only complaint&#8211;ever&#8211;is about practicing piano. Being at church with Ben is such [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2966,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[500,11811,1],"tags":[7587],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/relwy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/relwy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/relwy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/relwy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2966"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/relwy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/relwy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":806,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/relwy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428\/revisions\/806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/relwy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/relwy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/relwy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}