As life evolves, I’ve experienced how difficult it can be to allow people the chance to change and grow. Today’s Sabbath Revival post was written by Heather O in December 2007 about the scripts we live by. Good food for thought.

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I am over 30 years old.  I have given birth to two children.  I backpacked through Eastern Europe before the time of cell phones, Mapquest, and GPS.  I have lived in major cities in the US,  I am good at parallel parking, and I can even change a flat tire.

But when I travel with my mother, she still needs a phone call to know if I made it back to the hotel all right, even when the hotel is only a few blocks from the restaurant where we have just dined.

I don’t mind making the phone call.  It is a fairly minor inconvenience, one that costs nothing but minutes from my cellular plan, and it puts my mother’s mind at ease. But I have come to realize that it doesn’t matter if I’m 60, or  if I become a world famous martial arts expert, or if I invent a rocketship that can fly to Mars.  My mother will still always need that phone call, because she will always worry.  Because that’s what good mothers do.  It’s the role mothers play, so my mother plays it.

But my mother isn’t the only one who has a role.  I partied with my family this Christmas season, and every time I go back, I feel myself sliding into the spot I am supposed to fill, the position I took growing up. I always think that things will be different, but they never are.  What can I say–some scripts are just too hard to rewrite.

And the script just doesn’t stop with my immediate siblings. This year I watched as the script wrote itself for the next generation, for my children and their cousins.  Every year, my husband’s family does the Nativity, complete with costumes, props, and Baby Jesus represented by a stuffed duck.  My son is, and always has been, Joseph.  I even went so far as to MAKE him a Joseph costume one year, and we have the pictures to prove it.

But my 4 year old nephew, a lad who has always had the honor of being a wiseman bringing gifts, wanted to be Joseph this year.  Yeah.  Right.  Good luck with that, kiddo.

“I’m ALWAYS Joseph”, my son said, and the two of them tussled over the towel and headband until they were both near tears.  My SIL finally intervened and gave her son a shiny little car and told him he could bring that to the Baby Jesus duck.  (She’s a mother who knows that Matchbox can solve most problems with 4 year old boys.)  I thought, Poor kid.  As long as my son is around, my nephew will always have to be a wiseman.  And if my infant daughter grows up and ever wants to be Mary?  Fuhgeddaboutit.  My niece has been playing Mary since before my daughter was born.

Are we the only family who has these scripts?  What roles do you and your siblings play in your family, and do you always revert when you get together? Are these scripts a negative thing, and are they inevitable with big families?

As for me, catch up with me in a few years, and I will  probably be making a new Joseph costume for my kid.  And I am certain I will have my cell phone handy, programmed with my mother’s number on speed dial.