Finding Peace In A Chaotic World Series

I have a quick question for you. How many of you have ever heard the phrase ‘Helicopter Parent’? Helicopter parenting, for those of you who don’t know, is basically when a parent or parents take an excessive amount of interest in their child or their teenager’s problems. I was thinking that this was probably a relatively new term, but I realized it actually came out in about 1969. There was a book called Between Teenager and Parent, or something like that. In the book, one of the teenage girls in an interview said that “My mom hovers over me like a helicopter.” That was back in 1969. More recently, about the year 2000 or so, this idea of a helicopter parent began to gain new popularity because you had the millennials going into college. The college administrators were experiencing helicopter-type tactics from their baby-boomer parents and also the Generation X parents. They would call the school at 9 or 10 in the morning and have the secretary go to the dorm to make sure the child got up for class. Or when the child did not get the grade that the parent thought he or she deserved, the helicopter parent would call the teacher and complain.

I am willing to admit that I have a little bit of helicopter parenting tendencies. Is anybody else willing to admit that? Good. I have never called the college of any of my children, but I did do something a few years back that I think would classify me as a helicopter parent. I think it was about 2011 that there was a massive hurricane that was headed up towards Washington, D.C. It was moving slowly off the east coast. At that time, my daughter Natalie was in the Air Force. She is still in the Air Force, but she was stationed in Washington, D.C. for some training. As I watched this hurricane on the Weather Channel inch its way up the east coast, I felt my anxiety level inching up my chest. I couldn’t resist. I had to call her and see how she was preparing for this. Of course, I call her and say Natalie how are you preparing for this hurricane. Her response was what hurricane? She was about to just get in her car and get some fast food and this hurricane is barreling down. I said there is this monster hurricane headed your way. You have to make sure that you have plenty of water and food and batteries and flashlights. Her typical teenage response was “I’ll be fine, dad.” But I wasn’t going to let it end there. I said to her it is the weekend. It’s Friday. You have no classes over the weekend. We are only four hours away so why don’t you just get in your car and drive back to Pittsburgh for the weekend and return back on Monday morning. She really didn’t like that idea because she had just arrived at the base. In order to get permission to leave she would have to go through all sorts of red tape. But I wouldn’t take no for an answer. Just to keep me quiet, I think, she agreed to go to the supervisor. She said something like “My daddy says there is a big hurricane headed up this way and he thinks I should come home for the weekend to Pittsburgh.” After somewhat of a pause, I think the supervisor said something on par with “Listen, you tell your daddy that the Air Force owns you and we don’t really care that he is worried. If a hurricane is going to hit, we need you right here so you can help the people. Not back home with your daddy in Pittsburgh.” Needless to say, I humiliated her and I did less helicopter parenting.

I notice that some of you have a nervous laugh because some of you can probably relate to it. Some of you are probably thinking that is perfectly normal. I would do the same thing. But sometimes we take our concerns to the point of anxiety. If it is not about our kids, sometimes it has to do with our health or finances or job. The reality is we live in a very chaotic world and so concerns are perfectly normal. It is only when those concerns turn to worries and those worries turn into anxiety that they not only have a negative effect on our physical health, but our mental health and even our spiritual health. As we continue to look in the book of Philippians, we see that the apostle Paul has a nice little formula for dealing with anxiety in a chaotic world. Paul is at the end of the letter. It appears that he is just shooting off all these random thoughts. Although they may appear random to us, they are actually some of the meatiest passages in the Bible. Passages that give very practical advice for how to live as a Christian in this crazy and chaotic world. He starts off by complementing the church, referring to them as joy in his crown. Then he goes on the attack of this disunity issue. Apparently, there were two women in the church with difficult to pronounce names, Euodia and Syntyche, who, for whatever reason, couldn’t get along. We don’t know why they couldn’t get along and what their disagreement was, but we know that Paul would not tolerate it. He wanted to address it before it got out of hand. We don’t know what that disagreement was about, but we do know that Euodia and Syntyche will go down in history as the two people that could not get along in the church in Philippi. That is not a very good legacy to have. He quickly addresses this idea of disunity and then out of the blue he says “Rejoice in the Lord always.” In case they didn’t hear it the first time, he says “I will say it again, Rejoice.” Rejoice is not a word that we hear too often in modern day society, but we know that Paul was very fond of that word. I think he used it about 16 times in his letter to the Philippians.