“Love dies only when growth stops.”
–Pearl S. Buck
In all loving relationships, the love becomes stronger or weaker over time. Love must grow or it will eventually die. Whether it is our love for God or our love for another person, it must grow in order to survive. We never become too old to nurture our love for God, and no relationship between people has ever died from too much love.
We all change over time, and the nature of our relationships with those we love requires almost continuous adjustment. One of the best examples of this is the love between a parent and a child. A newborn child is almost helpless and must depend on its parents to provide for all its needs. But as the child grows, it becomes capable of doing more and more things for itself. Ultimately, the child becomes an adult and is ready to begin a life of its own. Parents who truly love their children will make the necessary adjustments at each stage of development. This is often painful, but for the love between the parent and child to continue to grow, the parents must be willing to gradually surrender their control over their children’s lives.
Parents show their love for their children by taking care of them when they are small, and they show their love for them by letting them go to pursue their own dreams when they become adults. Many parents are unwilling to allow their children to become totally independent when they reach adulthood. Some parents want to choose the careers their children will pursue, and try to make their children feel guilty if they have other plans. Our role as parents is not to pursue our dreams through our children’s lives. Our role is to support our children in pursuing their own dreams, which may be very different from our own.
Some parents absolutely refuse to give up their control over their children’s lives when the children grow up. They see their children as possessions and expect them to continue to abide by the wishes of the parents. Sometimes they defend their actions by saying that they are only looking out for their children’s best interests or argue that their interference in their children’s lives is motivated by love. But when parents try to continue to control their children’s lives after they become adults, the parents are being selfish, and love for the child is lacking.
Loving a person means helping that person to achieve his or her own dreams, and giving our unconditional support. Loving children means holding onto them and caring for them when they are young and helpless, and it means letting them go when they are grown. If true love exists between the parent and the child, and both work to nurture that love, the love will continue to grow so long as they are alive.
Think about it.
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Copyright 2025
Allen W. Smith
