Tim the Resolute
My husband, Chris, and I settled on the name Timothy shortly after we found out our second child was a boy. It was our first choice of name and, really, the only name we considered.
We’d given our first son a Biblical first name and a family middle name, and we agreed that we wanted to repeat the pattern with our second born son. One of Chris’s favorite Scripture verses came from First Timothy. Because of that, he suggested Timothy to me as a possible option, and I grasped onto it with all the firm resolve of a pregnant woman.
Little did I know that the firmness of mind which I had in that pregnancy would seem personified in the son I held in my arms at the end of it. Tim the Resolute, I could have called him.
People don’t usually get this about Tim immediately because he’s quiet. He’s actually my quietest child. Often, we associate resolution with loud stubbornness or abrasiveness; however, Tim as a child was neither. His determination came with an eerie silence. When he was little, if Tim had been very quiet for at least fifteen minutes I would go running to find him. A determined child can make endless concoctions in a short period of time, and a quiet one does so with seeming calm.
Chris and I have a multitude of examples from Tim’s childhood of what a single-minded and reserved child can achieve in a short period of unsupervised time. Heck, sometimes even while supervised Tim could silently create a surprising display of willpower.
One time, while seated in a shopping cart directly under my nose, Tim opened a playground ball from its cardboard packaging, held it up to me, and exclaimed with glee, “It’s alive!” He was two and by “alive” he meant “now free from the lame packaging in which you handed it to me.” But the thing which really gave me pause was that he’d somehow gotten the ball out of the packaging without ripping or dismantling the cardboard frame it had been held in and had done so in total silence. He had the cardboard nestled next to him in the cart like he had magicked the ball out of it. Quiet resolve.
Tim’s concrete sense of purpose has gotten him into plenty of tight spots over the years, especially with adults who mistake it as primarily a desire to make trouble for them. Resolution is a fine personal trait until it conflicts with someone else’s high priority for compliance. Tim does not highly prize obedience; he cares more that he meets certain goals. He doesn’t set out to defy expectations; however, he regularly does.
As a parent, I’ve had more teacher communication about Tim than all my other children put together. On my bad days, I wonder what I did wrong. I think back to those moments like the alived ball and ask myself if I handled it the right way. At the time, I delighted in it. I laughed then and I’m still laughing now when I think about that quiet, motivated two-year-old who knew what he wanted and made it happen. But he’s also been the kid who wasn’t-interested-in-the-mandatory-art-project or tuned out an adult because his own inner world was much more interesting to him. When I get emails about challenges at school or extracurriculars, sometimes I question if I should have reprimanded the toddler who saw no limits on his abilities.
As I stew in my worries, one memory rises to the top. Tim is almost five years old. He’s a student at the most delightful preschool run by a woman named Amy who’s built a pirate ship complete with a plank in her backyard for the children to play on. It’s almost Christmastime and the preschool students are making presents to give to their family and friends during class time. Tim comes home one day with a stick pony he’s made while at Miss Amy’s. He shows it to me and says, “It’s for her.”
I couldn’t think of who Tim meant. It certainly wasn’t me, the only girl in our family at the time. He did have a couple of female cousins, but when I named them, he shook his head. This toy wasn’t for them. He repeated, “It’s for her. The girl. My sister.”
That’s when it dawned on me. He was talking about Lilly. We’d been matched with Lilly by her foster care social workers, we’d been told that we would be Lilly’s adoptive family, but we hadn’t met Lilly yet, showed her picture to our two sons, or even told anyone her name. We’d simply told our two boys that we hoped to meet their sister in a month or two. But for Tim she was already a sister who needed a present under the tree.
A connected memory comes up then. It’s around the same time, I’m holding Tim’s hand, meeting another adult for the first time at a community event, and I say that I have two sons. I hesitate to explain that we were about to adopt a daughter and so I leave her out. Tim looks directly at me and says, “And the girl, Mom. David, me, and the girl.” Tim never left Lilly out from the minute he knew she was on her way home.
Sometimes, Tim’s resolve looks like breaking boundaries and refusing to go with the flow. Other times, Tim’s resolve has been the glue holding our family together, the assurance that we are doing the right thing. Another way to define resolution is keeping the faith. Tim is, in some ways, the most faithful person in our family. He is constant, unwavering, and loyal when the rest of us let doubt in.
When I read from St. Paul’s letters to Timothy, I can’t help but smile at the teenager my own Timothy has become. My son is the religious descendant of the saints who’ve come before him, those who’ve run the race and received the heavenly crown and broke a few rules along the way. I pray that he’ll take his resolve and grow to become like Paul and Timothy, full of undaunted faith. I pray that I never do dampen that faith.
Readings for the Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C) on the USCCB Website