Growing Up?

When our children are young, we tend to forget that they are living a life attached to ours. It is not until they become teenagers that we truly realize that they are individuals that are completely separate from the narrow world of our personal life.

We tend to forget or ignore that they are having experiences--bad and good--and having to deal with them, learn from them, and suffer through them.

Not that we are completely oblivious to them, more that our lives seem so huge that our children are more of an aside to the drama of our struggle to live each day and come through it as unscathed as possible.

Now that my children are adults, and I am a grandmother, I think back to the many times when my struggle was so overwhelming that my children were merely swept along in the title-wave of it all.

Understanding this, has given me an overwhelming desire to converse with my children about their childhoods. I want to be able to see it from their point of view. Knowing how my childhood was; remembered often quite differently from the view-point of my 6 siblings; I wonder how the muddle of our life, in those years, looked from their perspective.

Their view helps me to put things into perspective. It helps me to realize and confront issues that need to be confronted. It opens me to learning and growing into a better person. Not that I can go back and fix that which I broke, but I can understand, apologize where needed, and move foreword with my children in a much healthier relationship.

Now, I only need the courage to ask, and the grace to truly listen with a God heart, and not with the old defensive mechanisms kicking in.

Moving foreword, changing and growing is often painful and difficult. But, oh what joy is yours when you win the battle over some of these demons from the past.

Be blessed, and be a blessing!
Jude