A Letter To My Son

Dear Kevin,

I found this on your instagram: "I've never pleased anyone in my life, no ones ever told me they love me, or meant it anyway, what's the point of living if you have no one to live for? The only reason I'm not dead is bc I don't got someone to die for."

I think this might have something to do with a girl. Or I think this has to do with how you view your life. I wish I could make you see it differently. I wish I could have you see through my eyes just how much you are loved and how proud I am of you. I wish I could protect you from the world's cruelty. Yes, people sometimes say they love you and don't mean it. It's not your fault. It's not because of you that they do this. It's because they are hurting too. They are afraid of the truth. Sometimes people will hurt you and I wish I could cover you with a big blanket to protect your little heart from this. I know life hasn't been fair, and I am sorry to say that life will continue to be unfair. See, son, I want you to know that life is NEVER going to be what you think it ought to be. Life and people will let you down and you will be left empty wondering what the point of all this is. I know because I tried to live life by my own rules and it left me angry, depressed and disappointed. It took me a really long time to realize that my rules did not fit with how life really was. I wanted people to be more understanding and compassionate. I wanted to live where the good people always got good from life and the bad people got the bad stuff. That isn't true. I wanted people to be honest and kind, and I found out that most people lie and are unkind. I found out that trusting people was not always easy. I spent a lot of time in my anger and depression because I didn't know how to deal with ALL of this. I tried controlling and wishing and conforming, only to become lost and confused.

Son, you are not here to please anyone. The only person you need to please is yourself and your God. Trying to please people here on this Earth is like trying to put on a pair of pants that don't fit. And even if you can get them on, you look pretty silly because it's not a good fit. You need to wear a pair of pants that fit you. It doesn't matter if other people don't like your pants. There will ALWAYS be someone who will hate and disapprove of you. As a wise woman wrote, "don't try and win over the haters, you are not the jack ass whisperer."  Be true to who you are son. Be courageous and brave and live life in a way that puts a smile on your face. Even if the whole world doesn't understand you. Even if the whole world doesn't say they love you. But you know what? You do have people in this world who love you very much. I know sometimes it's hard to see it because we don't love you the way you want to be loved. That was another HARD lesson I learned. I learned that just because someone doesn't love you the way you want them to doesn't mean they don't love you at all.

See, Kevin, people are messed up. All of us! We all have stories of hardships and trials that beat us up pretty good. So we don't always know how to love one another the best way. Sometimes we are just plain selfish. I hope that you can look at us with forgiveness and compassion instead of judgement and anger. But see, there are people in this world who do try and love. Who give it their best shot and doesn't care whether it makes a basket or not. I am hoping you can be one of those people. A person who sees life's grander things rather than the ugly ones. Bad stuff will always happen around us, and to us. Please don't ever think that giving up is an option. The point of life is not about pleasing others or having everything your heart desires. It's about living it the best way we know how. By loving ourselves, our God, and others. It's messy sometimes, and confusing, but it's worth it.

I love you Kevin. And just because you have a pulse doesn't mean you are alive. We can walk around like a zombie and just conform to what the world says we should be, or we can be true to ourselves and live in a way that is honest and good to who we really are. In the end you will find that joy you have been searching for.

Be Brave. Be Courageous. Don't Give Up.

Love,

Mom

My Biggest and Hardest Lesson In Parenting

Excerpted from Daring Greatly:

"Who we are and how we engage with the world are much stronger predictors of how our children will do than what we know about parenting.

If we want to teach our chilldren to dare greatly in this “never enough” culture, the question isn’t so much “Are you parenting the right way?” as it is: “Are you the adult that you want your child to grow up to be?”."

 

 

YES, YES, YES!!! This is the target I have been aiming at since going through my journey as a single mom. And now that we are a blended family it is still my philosphy and my mantra.

 

In my post "How My Children Will Turn Out" I explain this, but not so eloquently as Dr. Brene Brown here in her book Daring Greatly. 

 

When my children were younger I would read the latest edition of parenting books and tried their techniques to "improve" my children's behavior. I tried the naughty step, time out, and wrestled with the ever so great debate of, to spank or not to spank. Sometimes I just lost my patience and whacked their bottom. But in all reality, as my children were getting older and, as hard as it is to admit, as I was getting older too, I realized that my children's behavior should not be my biggest focus. To focus primarily on behavior led only to shame and disappointment, which resulted in strained relationships and pure exhaustion. Try placing a strong willed boy in a naughty step for two hours! Of course I want my children to behave propely and appropriately, but if all I ever did as a mom was correct them, shame them, and punish them for wrong behavior, then how could they ever develop into their true selves? How will they learn from their mistakes and understand that being human is to make mistakes and learn from them?

 

I know it is cliche to tell our children, "Do as I say, not as I do," but are we not in a sense just copping out when we say that? Or are we saying that we don't like our own behavior and we certainly don't want our children to behave like that, so we say that silly statement. I say silly because children do do what we do! The only way children really learn is through modeled behavior. As a teacher of mid-schoolers, I know the best method to teaching is to model it for them first. Same goes for parenting. If I want my child to grow up to be loving, kind and brave, I need to model that for them. How I act, and who I am as a person, does say how my own children will turn out.

I would like to add a disclosure here. I do believe it is dangerous to try and model "perfect" behavior for our children. What I mean is that sometimes we do want our children to be "better" than us, and so we will try and live out a perfectionist lifestyle. A lifestyle that promotes "be good and perfect" rather than just be.   I am not saying that our children are going to become exactly like us. No, no, no. That would be horrible wouldn't it? I mean the world only needs one of us and one of us is enough! What I am trying to say here is that our children are watching our every word, our every action and our every decision. They are learning how to live this life through the way we live ours. If we live a life pretending to be someone else, or have adopted the ideas of perfectionsim, then our children will grow up anxious, fearful, and very confused. If we live a life of being true to who we are, allowing ourselves to make mistakes and learning from them, our children will grow up accpeting, kind and with a strong sense of who they are.

As Brene Brown stated, it is NOT about the skills of parenting that matter the most, although some skill is needed. Parenting is in fact a reflection of who we really are and how we want to live our lives. Parenting is in fact the greatest gift of love ever to be concieved on this planet. I know I am not perfect and I have made some mistakes, but there is no mistake in loving my kids and living out my life the best I know how. If I am teaching my kids anything, I am teaching them to be kind, giving and that happiness is really a choice, not an outcome. If I want to teach my kids anything, I want them to learn that being your true self is enough.

Parenting is hard because we don't want to look our children's faces and see ourselves. We do want better, but in trying to achieve better, we have lost the fight of what really matters. If we want better then we need to be better ourselves. We need to show compassion, kindness and be brave. Parenting isn't a job, it's a lifestyle.

So when my children do misbehave, I will give out the appropriate consequence, but I won't shame them or continue to hold a standard that is impossibe for them to achieve. I mean, don't we all misbehave from time to time and don't we all want a little acceptance and grace when we do? Of course we all want children who behave, but in the end it's not my children's behavior that defines them or my parenting skills, but who they are as people and who I am. Messy, but loveable!

Sweet Little Lies

As an English teacher I teach my students many different literary skills such as theme, plot and point of view. As a human being I like to teach my students life long lessons through literature. It is called bibliotherapy. Right now we are reading Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. It's a story about a young genius who is trained as a solider to help save planet Earth from terrestrials. It begins with this six year old Ender who is genetically enhanced to be the best solider for humanity. The story begins violently with him severely beating up a classmate of his. Then develops into a struggle of good and evil within the soul of this young child.

As I was reading about the inner turmoil of this young man in dealing with such violence, he said something that really made me think. "Sometimes lies were more dependable than truth." Hmmmmm… I don't think it means that lies are more truth than truth, but that lies are so prevalent in our life that we can depend on being lied to than on being told the truth.

I don't know why but that thought makes me loose hope for humanity. Why? How can we thrive and grow and evolve if everything is a lie? If our existence is based on lies then what is our true purpose?

It makes me wonder though…. what is the truth? And why are we so afraid of it? Why is it true that lies are more dependable than the truth? Has humanity gone mad? Or what did Ender mean? Did he mean that lies are easier to believe? That we would rather depend on a lie than the truth so that we don't have to face reality?

In the end, I suppose, it all comes down to our own truth, and the courage to live boldly with that truth! I do believe that the greatest people of all taught us this lesson over and over again.

Provider or Parenting?

Sometimes in the effort to make ends meet and support my family, I may have lost sight of my parenting responsibilities.

Dr. Bob Barnes says: "Establish daily: 'What's the priority, parenting or providing?' You need to decide to sit at your children's bedside and talk with them tonight and do the laundry later---even though you are exhausted. Then, you need to make the decision to choose parenting first again tomorrow night, or there may be nightmares later on when the kids are out of control because there was no nurturing parent; there was just a provider.'"

Trying to be "supermom" as well as "superworker" can be draining and discouraging. So I need to remember how great and mighty God is. He does not expect me to do this on my own strength.

So my prayer is that I will go about ways I can change my days to be less stressful and more parenting-friendly. Now that my life has been changing for the better I can be diligent with how I spend time with my kids. Sure I would love to be a great provider for them, but in the long haul its about the memories I make with them. 

"A rich child often sits in a poor mother's lap." ~Danish Proverb 

Being True to Myself

The last few weeks have been quite pleasing in a small intrinsic way. For the first time in my life I am truly on my own. Even though I have been divorced for two years now, I have always had a relationship with someone. But now that I finally broke it off with E, I am fully and completely on my own. Although I find this time to be stressful due to financial limitations... thanks to my humble teaching salary... I am finding that being true to myself is really where true joy comes from. Yes, it is lonely and scary to be on my own, and trying to live life the way society thinks I should is conforming and oppressing. I am now convinced that my life is made to love God and honor him. No matter how lonely and how scary it is to be on my own, I know that God is there and that His love is what will heal me and make me whole and complete. I have hidden this part of myself because of fear of persecution and how I didn't want to be identified with other so called "Christians" who were anything but. But with everything I have been through, the epiphany that has come to me is that being true to myself is to be true to God. The only way I will be truly happy is to follow my heart and my heart says to listen to God's guidance for my life.

Because of my situation and wanting to be the best mom I can be, I realized that God, who is my heavenly father, not some unknown spirit who is critical and judgmental, but my daddy, truly and genuinely cares about me and my life! This is a big deal for me. I don't have much of a dad, and that may be why I choose the kind of men I do as partners and why I have such a need to be loved and adored. I know my dad loves me, but you have to understand him and the whole situation of our relationship to appreciate why I don't have much of a dad. Love after all, is more than a feeling. Anyway, I have been so unhappy with my life lately, thinking that there was something fundamentally wrong with me and that was why I would never have a fulfilling life. But these last few weeks I have been slowly surrendering my life over to God, giving him control of the outcomes. After all, I have been doing a crappy job with my life anyway so what do I have to loose in giving Him my life? So in thinking I had it all figured out, I am ashamed to admit how selfish and inconsiderate I was. Instead of being there for my kids, I was too busy trying to please these men I was dating. I was busy with school and teaching. But it was for them! No, it was all for me! Sure going back to school and becoming a teacher was a great decision, but dating and bringing in another man into their lives, was not! If I could give advice to newly divorced women with children... don't date right away. Wait until you are emotionally stable and when your kids are used to the idea of you not being with their daddy any more. That may take a while, but in the end it will be worth the wait. There are too many issues to deal with while going through a divorce that dating is just not viable. It doesn't make sense to start a relationship when there is too much to deal with, and with small children, they need you! They need you to comfort them, to be strong for them, to provide for them, and to assure them that this whole darn mess was not their fault! If I could do it over, I would not date! I would spend my time raising my kids right, and loving them.

Dating not only complicates the family dynamics with the children, but it also delays the grieving period of the losses that come with divorce. A person who needs to grieve should not date! It is not fair to the other person. How can you bring your whole self into a relationship if you haven't grieved your losses? Its just not fair to the other person. I can thank E for this piece of wisdom. Since he was a widower, I realized he wasn't ready to date either because he was still grieving. Dating him helped me realize that I too needed to grieve and do what was right for my children. There is a saying that everyone we meet is a teacher of some sort. In my life this is true, only because I do look to see what others can teach me. Even in a bad situation, there is so much to learn! So I have decided to leave dating alone and truly grieve ALL of my losses. Not just from the divorce, but through childhood as well.

This is why I have chosen to give my life over to God. There is no possible way I can grieve all of this and still have some sort of decency and love left. I have made so many mistakes that I need a God who will not only understand and forgive me, but one who will give me another chance. The God I am getting to know and the God who has been pursuing me, is showing me that I am worth all the love in the world and that He will guide me when it comes to taking care of my two precious angels. This God is telling me that I do have another chance, that not all is lost. For me, that is all I need for right now. To know that I am not alone after all. That I am loved, in the most perfect and true way! No more trying to fit in and find love in the wrong way! I know that not everyone will understand my ways or why I choose to live differently, but that's none of my business. I have to be true to myself; so that I may gain some self-respect, self-esteem, but mostly to set a good example for my kids. I don't want them settling or thinking life is about "fitting in" or fulfilling selfish desires.

I am more than excited to see how God is going to bless me now that I have decided to give him the reigns of my life and family. I cannot wait to share it with you all. I know that some days will be harder than others, and the journey of healing is not always an easy one, but I know its the right one for me!