The Day of Regret

We all hope we won’t regret it.

Whatever it is.

We joke about our children needing therapy when they get older because some of our actions when they are kids.  But we’re really hoping that we don’t mess them up to0 badly, right?

Because we all know that we’re not perfect parents.   In our head, the list of our mistakes as parents is often much longer than our list of successes.  The daily trudge of taking care of our parental duties weighs on us and, sometimes, we’re just NOT Parent of the Year material.

Ok – more often than sometimes.

When our child struggles, we wonder what we did wrong.  When they fail at something, we feel like we have failed.  When they misbehave, we feel like we’re falling short.

Parenting is a daily challenge that would have been impossible for me without God.  He gave me strength and patience for my children when I had none.  I started participating in small group Bible studies while I was in my prime parenting years and I’ve never stopped.  My trust in God has grown along with my understanding of his love for me and my family.  God’s constant assurance that he was on my side became the foundation for my parenting when my children were still small.  During this time, my husband was growing in his faith as well, so God had lots of opportunities to work things out for us at our house.

Looking back I have no regrets.    My children are not now and have never been perfect.  Our house was never perfect.  Our family life has never been perfect.  But it is good.

And God is always good.

Sometimes I’d Rather Not Know

Do you want to hear a very scarey story?
When my son, Davey, was 4 years-old, he had a Big Wheel that he LOVED to drive around. He spent hours on it. He never walked anywhere – he drove his Big Wheel.

One day Davey was home with my husband, Dave, and Dave fell asleep on the couch. This was normal – nothing scarey going on here. It got scarey when Dave woke up and he couldn’t find Davey anywhere. Davey was gone……and so was his Big Wheel. Dave looked up and down our street – no Davey.
He started to feel frantic as he backed our car out of the driveway to look around the neighborhood. After going a few blocks and not seeing Davey, Dave suddenly had an idea of where Davey might have gone. Dave’s parents had just left after visiting us for several weeks. Every morning during this visit, Grandpa had walked and Davey had ridden his Big Wheel to the Circle K to get a paper for Grandpa and a treat for Davey.

Dave hoped he was wrong about Davey’s destination because the Circle K was almost a mile away from our house and you had to cross an extremely busy city intersection to get there.  Dreading what he might find, he pointed the car toward the Circle K.

And what he found was Davey’s Big Wheel parked outside the front door of the Circle K and Davey just walking into the store.  Another customer was holding the door open for our little son.

Davey’s guardian angels worked overtime on that day because Davey didn’t know anything about stop lights yet or walk signals.  Dave was smart enough to not even tell me this had happened until 2 months went by.  If he had told me right away, I’m sure I would have over-reacted and cut Davey’s Big Wheel into small pieces along with adding several more INSIDE locks to the door.  When I found out, it was already history.  Everything was fine.  But it still gives me the shivers today thinking about my little guy going across that big city street all by himself – except he wasn’t all by himself.  We’re confident that God stopped those cars – there’s no other explanation.

Lessons learned – God is with my children and takes care of them when I’m not there.  AND sometimes its just better as a parent to NOT know things.  That second lesson applies more often when they are teenagers and young adults 🙂

A Strong Will Can Be GREAT!

Having a strong will is a great thing if it’s focused on the right things.  When my 10 year-old strong-willed daughter finally  started focusing her willpower away from trying to control us and onto accomplishing great things for herself, it was an amazing thing to watch. 

Her teachers always told us how intelligent Katie was but I think her disobedience and belligerent attitude distracted her from being great in school.  After ‘the change’, she received straight A’s (except for 1 B) in Junior High through High School.  When she realized that she was close to graduating in the top 3% of her high school class, she moved up into one more Honors class to make sure she graduated high enough.  She was also in the marching band and on the softball team along with a year of being on the swim team.  Her high school years were busy and fun.

Graduating in the top 3% of her high school class meant that Katie was offered a full tuition plus books scholarship to both ASU and U of A.  She chose U of A and really loved it.  She did so well at the U of A that she was accepted into the top Masters Program  in the United States for her field at the University of Maryland, tuition free.   She excelled there and graduated with her Masters at the age of 23 without ever having to pay a dime in tuition.  One month later she was offered her current dream job in her field at the University of Maryland.

A strong will can be a truly awesome thing when its focused on the right things.

Romeo, oh Romeo….

Wherefore art thou, Romeo?

Are you still expecting Romeo to appear on Valentine’s Day?

I don’t know any Romeos. I know of some women who are still waiting for their husbands to magically become romantic on February 14th. I was talking to a friend who has been married 30 years and she really wanted to get some flowers for Valentine’s Day. I asked her if she regularly received flowers for Valentine’s Day and she said she never had. But she was really ‘hoping’ that he would ‘get it’ this year.
Why would he suddenly ‘get it’ this year? He’s not going to suddenly turn into Romeo and ‘get it”.
So, if we want it to happen, we have to help make it happen.
I love getting flowers from my husband. I love getting them delivered to the office so I can share them and I like getting them a couple of days early so that I have them all day on Valentine’s Day. I also like to get them for my birthday and Mother’s day along with any other day he feels like sending them. He knows that, for major holidays like Valentine’s Day, I like to have them arranged by the florist. For other minor holidays, I don’t mind getting a box of flowers and arranging them myself. They don’t always need to be tulips (my favorite flower)..
He knows all of this because I’ve told him. So now he gets it – he’s great!  And sometimes he actually sends me flowers for no reason – just because.

That’s kind of romantic, don’t you think?