Those moments that you realize you are your parents

Beautiful morning today.  Sun is shining and the air is cool and crisp.  I love the fall.  I had planned a fairly leisurely morning before work today.  I usually am up at the butt crack of dawn and continue an insanely hectic pace until midnight or so most days.  I had gotten most things attended to earlier in the week so I thought I would spend this morning reflecting and planning some new work outs for the coming week before heading to work.

As I have heard said, the best laid plans are often laid to waste.  Yes, they are, some days.  The kid was up in the night with tummy problems so I knew that she would be home today.  Still good.  Means I can sleep a little later.  And I did.  But at 9 this morning, as I was literally putting my feet on the carpet, my son calls and needs me to run some errands for him.  Ok..let me think..call ya back.  Then as I make it to the bathroom, phone still in hand..oldest daughter calls from a gas station.  She has run out of gas coming back from taking the grandson to school and she left her debit card at home and has no cash.

OK..I have had no coffee.  I am looking over at my youngest in jammies and needing a dressing change and meds.  I am now aggravated.  I am not particularly practicing self control at this particular minute and begin my little diatribe on previous conversations we have had about the foolishness of allowing one's gas tank to fall below a quarter of a tank and how doing such will create problems with the fuel pump later.

I love my oldest daughter.  She understands me so well.  She says, "Mom...I love you.  I will be here waiting."  She knows that I am coming.  I am just momentarily insane and that I should just shut up.

So I get the kid ready and throw on clothes and jump in the car and get it done.  I apologize to the oldest girl for my idiocy when I get to the gas station.  She hugs me and says it's alright.  She understands.

As I am driving home I remembered my dad speaking to me the same way.  He always took care of everything.  He was good at that.  I often wondered how he did, some days.  But I remember many times when I goofed something up and needed bailed out, he would give me the same type of little speech about how I should have not needed the help, before he helped.

I  realize that I have become my parent.  And although I understand the reasoning of this behavior.  I don't like that I do it.  I think it is possible that having experienced that with my dad has helped me think that I need to control everything all the time and I experience a great deal of anxiety because one cannot control everything.  I don't think that is what he wanted me to feel.  He just wanted me to think ahead a bit and plan for things.  Somehow I have taken that to the extreme.

I don't want my children to feel that they have to control everything.  I suppose it is at least good that I recognize it and try to explain myself  to my kids.

Just thinking.

  

Stranglehold

Well...I am just sitting here with the kid.  She is sick, unfortunately.  I don't know which is worse, when she is having behavioral issues or physical ones.  Both worry momma and wear her out some days.

I cannot fix either, but I certainly attempt to control both.  And the truth is that I cannot really control them..but still, I try.  

Fear..fear of losing her..although she is only mine on loan.  

Fear of failing..which I am most certainly doing if I define success as me having any influence on the outcomes of these obstacles.

Fear that where I am currently is where I am gonna remain.  And I think the very fear of that keeps me right here.

Fear has me grasping at straws and sliding down the haystack flat on my face.

But that is because I allow it to.

I have lived the consequences of negative outcomes of experiences.  So I tried to be smarter and think way ahead of possible scenarios and make decisions now that might keeping the worst case things from happening.

Sometimes that has been a good and wise thing to do.  But like many things, I have taken that concept and ran with it until all my choices and thoughts and wonderings have to do with "what if" until I find myself wondering about every little possible thing all the time.

So I find myself internally panicked when my kid is in pain in her current situation.  I am good at hiding it most times.  Sometimes she perceives I am not in least concerned which irks her 16 year old ego.  Oh no child, I am looking off in the distance running out every possible scenario of what this pain might mean today. And some of that is down right scary, indeed.  But what I do is put a smile on my face and say, "Let's wait and see", "The doc has some things lined up"  "We're getting there, just hang on", "Just a few more days", "It'll be ok"

I am such a liar, because that is NOT what I am thinking.  I am thinking, "She is in more pain" "What if her bowel ruptures and I didn't get her somewhere before it did"  "What if shes get peritonitis because of it" "What if she suffers horribly and then dies" "Why can't I make this doc see that we should be moving a little quicker, here"

Yeah, I have gotten out there..really.  A week more of this and my house will look like we are heading to Hoarderville, USA.  If I don't stop this continual fearful dialogue going on in my noggin, I am gonna completely freeze up my thought processes until I fail my classes, with only a week to go for this term.  I got finals to attend to.  School is one of the very few things I do to give myself hope for a better future.  It is important to me, as a person.  So I have to regroup here and get real. 

Because the reality is I have taken her to all the doc's I can.  Things are moving towards finding out what is exactly going on and what to do about it.  I have done, and I am doing all that there is humanly possible to do from my position.

But it is mighty difficult prying my tightly, rigidly fixed fingers loose.  As Ted Nugent sang, I got this in a Stranglehold.  But find a way to let go and keep moving forward, I must.  The only thing I need to do right now is to willingly, truly let go and then busy myself to keep from re-grabbing and Know that He is God and He's got this.    

My moon child....

Just finished feeding my daughter brunch.  She is now happily drawing and writing in a journal and I am typing away some of my anxiety.  This evening is my daughter's Prom.  It is her first.  She is the youngest of my three children.  I sat here actually realizing that she will be 17 this summer.  Wow!  Really, where did it go?

I remember so clearly she and her father and I walking on leafy tree lined streets, on a warm spring evening, the smell of lilacs heavy, as the moon sat full and high in the night sky: She was sitting upon his shoulders, while I strolled along side them, listening to them sing their little made up song about when the sun goes down, then the moon comes up..and hearing her infectious, delighted giggle and that baby voice pleading with her father to "sing it again Daddy, sing the moon song again".

The first picture I have of her as an infant is of her father holding her, both looking up toward the night sky..the light of the moon illuminating them.  She was 2 days old.  She was born in the middle of a heat wave one July and it was very warm in the house, as we did not have air conditioning.  We were all outside in the evening enjoying some cool relief from the heat of the day.  Her father was holding her, walking around the back yard, pointing out various flowers and bushes and explaining them to her.  Her eyes following him and watching him in seemingly serious concentration..:)  As he was walking around he brought her tiny body up towards his face.  With both faces turned upwards, both bathed in soft blueish light, he began his made up song of the moon for the first time.

This all came to my mind again as I was watching her last evening when she was sitting on the patio watching the "super moon" rise.  As she sat alone, I heard her ever so softly sing this song to herself, looking up at the bright night sky....I always sang to her, "You are my Sunshine", as she most certainly is, my sunshine. She liked it well enough, but it is the moon song that she chooses for herself.

This evening she will wear her first formal dress.  She will sparkle and dance under the moon...my baby is not a baby anymore.

But she shall always be my moon child...

Wake Up Call Revisited....

Read a blog today entitled “Wake up calls” and it motivated me on to re-awakening myself, I suppose.  I will place a link..  http://hipesandhope.blogspot.com/2012/05/wake-up-calls.html

Sometimes I still view myself in my 30’s, I’d say 20’s even, at times, but that probably sounds bad.  Thirties are more accurate.  Just from my own self perceptions, I still look at myself and the world much in the same way now that I did then.  Sometimes that is a good thing.  Helps keep the mind fresh and accepting and sometimes more willing to still take a chance.  But the very hard reality is that in 2 and half years I will see the half century mark.  And I am still in a place in the world of a 20 or 30 year old.  I always seem to tell myself “I got time”.  Do I? 

I have a child who has been very ill for the past couple years.  Due to that circumstance, I lost a job that I liked and did well in and had been diligently plugging away at for over a decade at the time to care for her.  I had roots there.  I don’t have any roots anywhere anymore, I don’t believe.  I am just free floating like a dandelion tuft on the wind with no clue where I will land and plant.

My child is somewhat improved in many ways and I find that I am having a heck of a time finding another job, now.  Even lower respected jobs that are more plentiful and I thought would be no problem getting are proving quite difficult for me to obtain.  That is a bummer, indeed.  I am viewed as too old.  Wow!  When did that happen?  Where did all this silver hair come from under this dye? Where did all this pain in my joints come from?  It takes me 10 minutes of stretching in the morning to walk without hobbling.  Why is my blood pressure staying elevated and my cholesterol is rising up against me and becoming an enemy that can no longer be manipulated with simple dietary changes?

I don’t think I am in Kansas anymore, Toto.  The world around me, and within me, has become a foreign place.  I don’t quite know how to begin to adapt, myself, anymore.  But I know that if I do not find a way to adapt to the changes taking place in and around me, I will surely perish, overtime, physically and spiritually.   This SHALL REQUIRE focused and consistent change on my part.  And I believe I may need more than a little help from my beloved and beneficent Creator and Savior.

Actually, upon further meditation and prayer, I believe I have personally thought and attempted to change myself quite enough, and have not moved meaningfully towards meeting the goal.  I feel it is time to let God have the wheel completely and just maybe I need to sit on my hands and let Him do the driving as He sees fit.  I know myself well enough to realize this will be no easy task for me to allow to be completed.

Pray for me.

Sometimes out of the Dark, Comes a Brilliant Flash of Light.

I find it funny how life works sometimes.  For a variety of reasons, I had recently come to the personal conclusion that nothing I had been doing had worked out for quite some time and that it was quite likely that nothing was possibly ever going to work out ever again.  I was even considering the possibility that maybe the long dreaded nervous breakdown was finally at hand.

Then one experience occurred, from out of the least likely of places, that struck something vital within me.  And from that one small thing, my state of mind and being began to change.  And from that change began the inspiration for a series of other changes..and suddenly I could once again catch a glimmer of light on the horizon.  And the glimmer of light helped me see my way to get up off the ground where I had been laying and spit the dirt back out of my mouth and start walking forward.  Although slow...and somewhat off kilter, motion, still.  And from those changes I began feeling as if there was a hope for something more, something better once again...a renewed attempt to experience the fullness of living rather than passively allowing life to continue slipping through my fingers.

From within the darkest of dark moments...sometimes there is a spark that is like a brilliant flash of light that suddenly illuminates the path, warms the heart, and strengthens the soul...inviting one to rise up and live again.

I am thankful to the Lord for that light and may God bless the instrument that obediently brought it into my existence.

 I Corinthians 1:26-28 KJV
26: For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many might, not many noble, are called:

27: But god hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;

28: And the base things of the world, and the things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought, things that are.