Buck Murphy was walking down the street in Whiteville, Tennessee, in the late 1950s when a white man yelled at him, “How’s that jailbird son of yours doing?” It was a delicate subject in the segregated South—Buck’s son Curtis had been arrested for taking part in the Nashville sit-ins, which would eventually galvanize the civil rights movement in America. “Where is he?” the man taunted. “Is he still in the Nashville jail?”
Now, there were many reasons for the Murphys to be concerned about their son’s activism. Of course, they too believed segregation was an evil and they had suffered its many effects. But they also didn’t want anything to happen to their boy. They feared reprisals at home. Maybe they even worried that Curtis was trying to change too much too quickly. But in that moment, challenged by a bully mocking his son, Buck demonstrated that thing that all children want from their parents—true support. Buck said firmly: “Wherever he is, I am too.”
Your kids are going to make choices that scare you. People are going to doubt them. People are going to criticize them. Maybe you yourself doubt the wisdom of their choices. And? Where they are, you must be too.
Love your kids. Root for them. Support them. Fight for them and fight with them. Be beside them and behind them. Wherever they are.