Comfort of quiet reflection

I'm very excited to report that this blog now has a reader. Meichelle, from down-the-street, reads my blog and posts about it on facebook. Does writing make one a writer? Or does having a reader make a writer? One wonders.

I am blogging from the comfort of my propped-up pillows in bed, as is my wont. It's deliriously self indulgent to sit abed and read, drink my decaff, and blog before rising to face the day. Such pampering is the first of many little treats I have given myself this summer. In fact, I really am going to need to evaluate my long list of hobbies, as they seem to be crowding out the space for mundane matters like responsibilities.

School starts soon, which is likely to make short work of prioritizing my day.

It's been a hard couple of years, as I believe I've mentioned, so the peace and serenity of an indulgent summer has been soothing to my weary soul. There is room to simply Be.

I've found myself saying that the past couple years have been the hardest of my life, but I'm not sure that is strictly true. It seems to me that whichever crisis is coiled around my neck is the hardest ever, simply because the current crisis always demands every ounce of strength to survive. In this way, then, everyone's immediate difficulty really is the worst ever. There is no baseline economy for an accurate comparison of crisis.

The past couple of years have challenged me to my core. The external elements have been devastating, but they only last so long as does the situation. It is the internal combustion which echoes into my tomorrows. That is where I have really been upended.

My baby, who is now halfway through 16, is an addict. In his 14th year he embraced this devastating identity with an iron grip. His insanity caused a lightning storm within our home. Fingers of brilliant destruction randomly seared everything. You can not live within an electric storm and escape unscathed.
My dear boy was more shattered than the rest of us, hard as that is to fathom. He was carried into darkness he could never have imagined.
He is safe now. He is in the midst of a long-term residential drug treatment program where he is thriving. He is learning to know himself, and to forgive himself. He has a long road ahead, no doubt about it. But right now is peaceful.

Hindsight being what it is, I can now condense this into a tidy paragraph, but it didn't unfold that way. Day after day of watching him unravel before my eyes challenged everything I had ever known about being a mom. I couldn't protect him. There were great spans of time when I couldn't even find him. I, Benedict Arnold, conspired with the police on numerous occasions just to pluck him from quite literal jaws of death. Parenting is supposed to be teaching, guiding, disciplining...isn't it?

I home schooled my boys because I believed that it was God's best for them. We didn't have a TV for most of their youth. They had a full-time, very committed mother. These kids are loved! And yet...

So much of my personal identity is wrapped up in who I am to these kids. I thought that parenting with all my heart would produce young people who are solid. The very force of my love should have been enough. But enough for what?
I thought the results of my careful parenting would be evident to all, but that was never guaranteed. In fact, I don't think that was ever the point. I am responsible to do what is right,but the results are out of my hands. If I have done what I have been called to do, then that is enough. Neither my successes, nor my failures, are equal to the sun total before me.
My children will make their own choices, and I will pray. A lot.