Destroyer

Picture Courtesy of Pixabay

A week or so ago, my son saw a Navy destroyer

We were traveling and we happened upon it at around the same time a bridge was opened.  I’m not sure if it was open for the destroyer or a different boat, but my son looked at in awe.

The last time I think I saw that much awe was when he was little and fascinated with fans and lights.  I almost contemplated taking him to a fan store for his first birthday, but I digress.

With mouth open and fingers pointing, he asked- “What’s that”.  I may have started with, “a big boat” while I thought how I would preserve my son’s innocence from talks of war.

With everything going on with North Korea, Iran and the general fear in the world, I didn’t really want to feed him fear.  Yet, I think my four year old could see visually that that boat wasn’t for joy rides.

I find walking the tight rope between sharing too much and sharing too little as a parent is kind of a tough road.  My husband and I don’t want to shelter our son so much that he can’t identify good from evil or grow up and then be exposed to a world without knowledge and the ability to deal with bad things happening, yet we don’t want him to go through the world fearing everything and having nightmares.

Looking at this dilemma, from a medical viewpoint...  I wouldn’t send my kid out into a world full of exposure to measles and polio and all sorts of bad diseases without a vaccine. So exposing him to the concepts of good and evil and that yes, there is evil in the world is a little bit of a vaccination.  My parents did it with me and apparently as the world changes, so must the vaccine.  Maybe we are having this talk way before my husband and I did when we were little, but the “vaccine” has to get to the patient before the evil does.

So what did I say to my son?   I told him the Destroyer fights evil.  I didn’t get into just vs unjust war or wise decisions or politics.  He has plenty of time for that.  He knows we respect the military and they are heroes who fight for our freedom.   He immediately went into his imagination about how the Destroyer blows things up, etc, etc, fortunately without the knowledge of what that looks like but a four year old's imagination where it’s not real people, just evil getting blown up.

I stopped him there and told him the MOST important thing the Destroyer does is just being present.  As we discussed further, I said the most important role of a weapon of good is not to be used, but to deter evil from happening.  He still wasn’t convinced.  I told him, “if your teacher is around, does it make your classmates behave better than if your teacher isn’t around?”  He understood.

It’s easy to think that being a hero means doing great acts, but sometimes the best way to be a “Destroyer” is just being present with goodness and standing up to evil; no missiles necessary.