December 23, 2015
By Ned Holstein, MD, MS, Founder, Chair of the Board and Acting Executive Director
A few days ago, I saw one of those stories that keeps coming around. A mom was lamenting the emptiness of her empty nest after her last child went to college. And thinking about how happy she will be to see her children again at Christmas.
But for many of us, the empty nest happened when the children were six, not 17, and they will not be back home for Christmas. It is eternally amazing to me that the media never make the connection between these two stories, one a story of children naturally taking wing from the nest, and the other an unnecessary tragedy caused by the fecklessness of the family courts. The connection is the human heart.
So, for many of us, Christmas will not be the joyous celebration of faith and family that we see on television. The absence of those precious children will make Christmas more like the opening of a wound than the celebration of life and hope.
National Parents Organization exists to prevent this injustice, to exterminate the crime of carving loving and fit parents apart from their children, and to promote the healing of ruptured families through justice. The prophet said, “Justice, justice shall you pursue!” And that is what we do.
That is why I ask today for your support of our sacred work, the holding-together of parent and child. Please make the largest gift you can imagine so that together we can change the world, bringing light where there is darkness. If you have already made your gift, perhaps you could just top it off with a small supplement. If you have never given before, perhaps this is your chance to show that love, family and children are closer to your heart than anything else.
For those of us who are enduring the unnatural and unjust ordeal of a premature empty nest, we can take consolation in the knowledge that our loving children will return to their loving parent, that our grief is temporary. As we are told in 1 Corinthians, “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
Yes, we will endure. Because Psalm 126 tells us, “Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy.” Our children will turn their hearts in joy to their beloved parents in the fullness of time.
As we wait, we will feel the deep inner peace of knowing that we have done everything we could for our children, and for all the children. When we do all that we can, we will have no shame and we will be filled with righteous pride that we did all that we could do.
This is why National Parents Organization exists, to help you do all that you can do to rescue YOUR children, and ALL the children, from the pain they too are enduring. I believe there are children all over America who will jump into the arms of a parent on Christmas morning, a parent whose heart is overflowing with love, because our efforts together made it possible; that if we did not exist, there would be far more darkness and much less light. And that justice would still be a pale, cold, far-away star, beyond reach.
Please support our precious work today. Without your help we can do nothing.
May this season be the time we renew our hope in the knowledge that we will endure, and may 2016 be the year we realize our most joyous dreams.
Together with you in the love of our children, the pursuit of justice, and the strength of endurance,
Ned Holstein, MD, MS
Founder and Chairman of the Board