When our children turn 18, we hope to happily launch them into the world
to become the adults we've been preparing them to be. Their pathway
seems clear: most will go to college, find a vocation and then a true
love, and settle into a comfortable life while we parents keep in touch
through occasional phone calls, family gatherings, and surprise trips
home for Christmas. But now more than ever, these expectations fail to
acknowledge the significant challenges faced by many young people, from
a pandemic to racial unrest to a climate crisis that is setting the
world on fire, figuratively and literally.
While young people are consistently told they need to discern God's
calling, in Finding Our Way Forward, Melanie Springer Mock draws on
her decades as a college professor and mom to four adult children to
explore how finding our way means developing a more expansive
understanding of calling for ourselves and for the young adults we love,
one that moves beyond vocation and capitalistic enterprises to what God
really calls us to: Seeking justice. Loving mercy. Walking with
humility. Loving others. Loving God. As we do so, our relationships can
be transformed as together we find our way forward.
