I apologized to my son today...

...I was frustrated with him and became short and brusque. He really didn't deserve to be spoken to that way, even if he was behaving something of a pill. When I am being grumpy towards others is when I need some gentle encouragement the most, and I want to give that to my son, instead I hurt his feelings.

Some people might say that I am not be authoritative enough, or that I am giving him too much power or something. Perhaps even that I was justified in my response; after all, I am the adult and he needs to respect me, and he wasn't doing that. It seems that since I have become a mother, most of the advice I'm given has something to do with making sure the kids know who's boss or something along those lines.

Thing is though, I think I taught him something so much more important than, "always speak respectfully to adults, even when they're being unkind to you," (which really amounts to nothing more than adults are more important than kids so it's okay if I treat you poorly). I taught him that all people, even ones that are little or grumpy, are deserving of respectful treatment. I taught him it's not ever okay for someone else to treat him unkindly and that he is worth so very much more to me than being "right". I also taught him through my example, how to humbly and sincerely admit when you are wrong, to ask for forgiveness, and to repair the relationship.

I got to say that I think all of that is so much more important than just making sure he knows he has to be respectful to me.

Run awaaaaaayyyyy!!!!!!

Today I would like to share with you one of my rules of life. It's a simple rule, and yet one I many times have a very hard time keeping. Ready for it? Here it is:

DON'T ENGAGE THE CRAZY PERSON

No really. See, so many times in my life (especially the more time I spend on the internet) I find myself in contact with a person who is for all intensive purposes crazy. At this moment, I have a choice: I can walk away and save myself much angst or I can choose to engage with them on their own playing ground. Unfortunately, too often I tend to forget my little rule and choose to engage. After all, I am quite certain that if they would just listen to me, they will in fact realize that the lime on their head is NOT really a helmet protecting them from Lord Vader's mind meld that is being broadcasted to them by the government through the oranges in the Supermarket. Alas, their inevitable response is that clearly I am not enlightened enough to realize that this is the plan that has been printed out in coded messages on the backs of road signs, decipherable only to the secret government operatives from England because of course-they drive on the wrong side of the road over there. At this point I am left banging my head against the wall and exclaiming loudly to my husband, "Who BELIEVES this sort of thing?!?!" and he is left reminding me once again that I broke my cardinal rule. So if ever you find yourself in conversation with one of our lime-wearing friends, please do yourself a favor and remember that whatever else you do: DON'T ENGAGE THE CRAZY PERSON!

Warrior Part 3

It is then no wonder what happened next. When I was in high school I met a boy and fell head over heels in love. He gave me what I was longing for so very deeply for so long, and I soaked it up. I opened myself completely to him, telling him all about my past and what had happened before and he gave ALL of the appropriate responses of shock and horror and even anger that I NEEDED to hear. I needed so much for someone else to say that what the adults in my life had done was wrong. The joy of things lasted for one whole summer, and then things began to change and I ended up in what was a very controlling and abusive relationship. I spent less and less time with the two friends who loved me as I was, and more time with him to avoid his punishments whenever I did something on my own. He was very willing to tell me all about how hard I was to love, how others were so surprised that he could be with me like he was, how selfish and stubborn and manipulative I was, and how I was always trying to get my way. And I believed him. How could I not? He was only saying what I had already heard from so many other people. And I'd believed them too. This relationship lasted until two months after I graduated from High School.

The next few years are somewhat of a blur. I was in the middle of what has now been diagnosed as a full on PTSD meltdown. I was working to relearn how to be a person. I also met and married my husband and became a mother. My first year of motherhood and of marriage were very crazy. I was working 40-50 hours a week and parenting our son, while my husband worked 70-80 hours a week (at three different job) in order to make ends meet. Finally I was pregnant with our second son and we knew we couldn't keep this up. At this time we moved away and I became a stay at home mom, while my husband worked only one job, at normal hours-and suddenly I had time to think. We began attending a church in the area that had a good children's program and a worship style that appealed to us. I was determined that here and now I was going to do this WELL, I kind of viewed it as a fresh start. These people didn't know anything about the foster care of all that other stuff, they only saw a young wife and mother and I was determined to be the most Godly wife and mother there ever was. Under the tutelage of this church I learned that a good Christian wife is ultimately quiet and submissive. She prays while her husband does. She essentially closes her eyes and allows him to lead her wherever he would be. So I bowed my head and accept it. This was incredibly difficult to do with a husband who wasn't incredibly inclined to BE that kind of dictator er...husband but that's a different post ;-)

At this point in time, something wonderful happened in my life that really is a turning point. A friend of mine introduced me to an online community called Gentle Christian Mothers. I will forever be grateful for the women there who demonstrated for me the kind of healthy thinking and living I was striving for but had never quite achieved. I made so many friends who came around me and answered my questions and very patiently and lovingly walked alongside of my on my journey of healing. And now, in my journey of healing-my inner warrior has been awakened. It would be foolish of me to think that *bing* that's it! I'm now she-ra the magnificent!!! I will have to re-learn who I am and how I am. I will have to fight hard against all those inner shame messages that have become part of even how I think. I am sad for the parts of me that were buried for so long. And I'm hopeful and excited for the increased healing in my journey.

Ready for the ride? It's about to get crazy!!!!

Warrior Part 2

From the time I was a very small child, my mother very lovingly characterized me as a "strong willed child." This was never said in a derogatory manner and I know that she was very well meaning in her attempts to tell me it really was a good thing and to "use my power for good not evil." However, the message I received was, "you are very difficult to love." Perhaps if I had been able to remain under my mother's care for my whole childhood this would have been tempered as I grew and matured, but unfortunately her illnesses and hospitalizations meant that I needed to go and live with other families in foster care.

My first foster home was actual a family from our church who had children of similar age to myself and the two of my siblings who also live there. This family was both verbally and physically abusive from the very first night I was there. I frequently heard words like, "You are a selfish, spoiled brat" and I believed them. Over the next five years I was in and out of foster care; being a foster child is an experience that has so much more to do with where you live because in so many ways you become kind of like communal property. Any adult in your life feels like they should have a say in raising you and helping you turn out right and all of that. It has a tendency to bring out both the best and worst sides in others, and so I  saw and experienced some of the absolute worst parts of adults that were not my parents. I remember some very specific times when in my hurt I reached out to another adult and response is so clear in my head, "You need to think about how hard it is for said person to do what they are doing for you." While I am sure the intent was to teach me to have grace for the struggles of others, keep in mind I was a child. A hurting child. A hurting who was being further hurt by the ones who were supposed to be helping me. So the translation then became, "you are so difficult to love and care for it's only expected for you to be treated poorly."

We (my siblings and I) left foster care for the last time the summer before I started 5th grade. The first year was one of regaining my feet and finding some kind of stability. The next year I was off to middle school, and things started to go downhill fast. I was still the emotionally traumatized and less mature child in desperate need of healing, and I very quickly became the target of bullying in my school. On top of that I was attending youth group with people who had been former foster siblings, and people in close contact with other former foster siblings, so it was common for me to be embarrassed by some story or other being shared about me. I internalized the shame of being different and weird very deeply; I knew I would never be fully accepted as an equal into the group.

My saving grace in that time were my two closest friends who loved me for who I was and never made me feel like less than or an outsider. Still, the leaders of our youth group were the young adult siblings whose parents had been very active in trying to help my parents. The dynamics there are all kinds of messy for many many reasons, but we'll suffice to say they didn't like me very much and while they were too "godly" to show it overtly I felt it deeply-and because of all that I'd been through before (and how loved and important this family is in the denomination to which we belong) it became one more piece of evidence against me.

To be continued...here

A Warrior At Heart?

This post was inspired by the a different blog post that can be read here. I highly recommend reading not just that post, but the writer's whole blog; she really does have a wonderful way with words and has made me think more than once.

One reason that this blog in particular resonates with me is that while I read through the words, I cannot help but feel echoes of a past "me" that has been hidden for a very long time. I know innately that I was also born a warrior in my spirit, but much time and many hurts seem to have worn away at that part of myself. For whatever reason, reading someone else's description of this in her own life awakened it in me, and has me wondering what on earth happened?

To be continued...here

Parenting from a place of fear.

I've been thinking about this for awhile and thought I would share it here. One of my earliest realizations when learning about GBD was that too often we as parents choose our actions or philosophies from a place of fear, and how many of the punitive paradigms are really based on those fears.

We are afraid of failure.
We are afraid that it will be "this way" forever.
We are afraid that our children will not go to heaven.
We are afraid of our child being "that child" that creates havoc or no one likes.
When they are babies we fear the "terrible twos" and when they are children we fear "those teen years".
We are afraid our child will end up in jail.
We are afraid of being judged for their actions.

And so we decide that if we can control things NOW, early on, then it will be easier later. So much of the parenting advice out there stems from, "you need to make sure this is taken care of NOW so that later on down the road it won't be an issue." So spank your child now because when they are bigger than you, what can you really do? Make sure your child learns to sleep through the night NOW so that when they are older they won't bother you at night.

But where do all these fears lead us? Well, for one they rob us of the NOW that we can have. They rob us of enjoying babyhood because of the fear that if we just enjoy it the child will never grow out of it. They rob us of laughing at our toddlers silly antics because we see them as emergence of "will" instead of emergence of "self". Funny story: my 3.5yo has come into an opposites stage. It's really hilarious at times. If I say, "it's time for supper" he says, "It's time for lunch!"; if I say, "Let's go upstairs" he says, "let's go downstairs"; if I say "Oh that's hot!" he says, "Oh that's cold!" We just go with it for now. It won't last forever Now, looking back at when my oldest was young, I never would have tolerated it from him. In fact I would have probably been incredibly worried and made sure to punish him each time because it was evidence of defiance coming out early and I would have been certain to nip it in the bud fast. THAT is parenting out of fear.

Mommas, let's start a revolution! One that refuses to give in to the fear based messages. One that says that children are valuable for who they are, not how good they make us look. One that is so fearless that we embolden OTHER mothers to STOP parenting from fear themselves. One in which we all simply enjoy our children for the now instead of constantly worrying about the later.

I want my kids to feel safe enough to misbehave...

Not that I'm okay with them doing whatever they want whenever they want to. We have rules and standards and ideals in our home, but if my children are following them because they are afraid of what would happen if they didn't then I haven't done my job very well. The ultimate goal of my parenting is to help my children develop the sense of responsibility, self control, patience, insight, and understanding that will enable them to make the right decisions on their own and to be able to handle their own shortcomings (and those of others) with grace and confidence.

A big part of that is then making sure my children feel that it is safe to mess up. I cannot teach them through a situation they are hiding from me, and they will not learn to extend graciousness to others that I do not extend to them. Every human being in the world messes up, so part of life should be the ability to handle that with responsibility as well, something that is very hard to do if one cannot mess up without having shame and humiliation ingrained into them. That kind of parenting is only one dimensional-it says, "if you mess up you deserve to feel bad and I will teach you that so you do not mess up again." Many many loving parents teach this to their children because it is how they view themselves as well, "If I do bad I deserve to feel bad" and yet we all live in this human condition called being imperfect. Do we all deserve to feel bad all the time? Absolutely not!!!!

Allowing home to be a safe place to mess up is hard work, it is multidimensional parenting that sometimes exhausts me. However, it opens up a whole new world of opportunity for me to work with my children, and even to allow myself to learn from them at times. I am not raising good citizens, good people, responsible partners, or even productive or successful businessmen. I am raising adults who will have the confidence to learn from their mistakes and the ability to have and understand the concept of "grace", they will know how to allow others to be imperfect and love them without subjecting themselves to boundriless behavior and above all they will be secure in the knowledge that there is nothing they can do that will remove them from my love, or the love of Christ.