Pride

While attending The Career and technical center's graduation this morning Mike and I sat in front of a lady holding a baby. She was saving seats for three other ladies with babies. As we overheard, these were all Mother's of students who were holding their grandchildren while the mothers graduated.There were also many other girls (and one boy )who were walking around in their caps and gowns carrying their infant and toddler children. Being an old person this struck me as odd. Of course I had known a couple girls who were pregnant and had babies while in high school but this was a rare thing in my generation.( in My generation this was down right shameful and embarrassing) Here it seemed to be much more common and accepted.At one point all four mother's of the children behind us were standing with their mothers and children.I overheard one Grandmother choke back the tears as she stated how proud she was of all of these girls for graduating with babies.My first thought was that I was proud that my daughter was not one of them. This was not a snotty my child is better than yours thought but just thinking that I am proud to have a daughter who is living a moral Catholic life which includes not involving herself in premarital relations. This thought continued on as we waited for the ceremony to start. I guess it is true that when you love someone, you forget their mistakes and feel pride in their accomplishments. I am sure that at least some of these mother's hearts were broken when they found out that their teenage daughters were pregnant.I am sure that many were embarrassed to find out that some of the fathers had no interest in sticking around to help these Mother's daughters or grandchildren. I can only imagine how these Mom's felt but they surely still loved both their daughters and learnt to love these grandchildren. When we love someone don't we all do this? How about when our spouses make us so mad that we can't see straight, do we still love them ? I know I do. We are human, we all make mistakes.We all must forgive and feel pride in what we can.Now don't get me wrong, I think today's children need to stop playing adult.I try my best to teach my children that just because society accepts such things, that doesn't make them right.I try to lead them along a respectable path into adulthood and hope that one day when they are on their own they will remember what they have been taught. But truth be told, they probably will stumble once or twice. Hopefully not in big ways such as an unwed pregnancy, drug use or anything like that but we all stumble from time to time.I guess that in the end we just have to learn from our stumbling and go on. Maybe then people will be able to get past our mistakes and feel pride in us or more importantly, we can find pride within ourselves.