Can You Tell Me How To Do This?

We are given manuals for anything we purchase. Everything from our vacuum cleaner to our can opener telling us all we might ever want or need to know. How many times do we just toss them aside and ignore them because after all, I know how to use a can opener. Hello, I wasn't born yesterday.

However, the most complex, most difficult thing to understand and operate that we ever encounter in our lives, our children come without any instructions. I know you have probably heard this analogy a hundred times. Maybe in all truthfulness, if we understood how hard these precious little babies were going to be to take care of, we would chose to pass on having them.

My kids are older now. We made it through the midnight feedings, the diapers, preschool, first day of leaving them at kindergarten, losing teeth, teenage attitude (at least two of them are through that), learning to drive, sky rocketing auto insurance, first romances, broken hearts. It is amazing to look back on all that we have been through. When I think of my children my heart swells with pride and my eyes fill with tears. How is it possible to love any one person that much?

This is something that we learn by trial and error. And just when you think you have the first one figured out and try to use all your new found knowledge on the second one, you discover that this child is totally different and none of that applies. So we start all over again. How does this one work and why is this child, raised in exactly the same household and circumstances, so different than the first.

We learn from how our parents brought us up. We learn what worked and what didn't work. How many times have you said that you would NEVER do something that your mother did and then all of a sudden there it is, it just slips out. Your mother is talking through you. Wait a minute, that wasn't supposed to happen, after all I am much smarter and more sophisticated than my parents. Well maybe not. My parents were trying just the same as I am. They were human just as I am. They had strong willed children much the same as I do.

What I hope I have learned over the years is that yelling doesn't work. It makes me feel worse than them in the end. I want them to be self assured and confident. I want them to be happy. I want them to be able to go out into this world and take care of themselves. I want them to find someone and have children and have to go through all of this for themselves. I want them to know that while we may encounter bumps from time to time, we will stay on this road to the end.

I am so grateful that God has entrusted into my care these three amazing people. I hope that I have been able to rise to the challenge. My mother used to tell us that she raised us to be able to leave her. If we weren't able to do that, she had failed as a mother. So true but difficult to see them spread their wings and fly without you. That is a happy / sad moment rolled together into one.