Last night, within a one hour period, I had to console two of my kids (youngest and oldest) as they cried and both stated, in their own ways, that "life sucks". By the time I was done, I felt like I had just survived a tornado of emotions. I also felt unbelievably inadequate. I had no magic answers. I had no profound solutions. I had no wise advice. All I had to offer was love and sympathy and boy, did that seem insufficient. I wanted to be hit with a lightning bolt of YES! I know how to fix this. I mean, I'm the MOM; aren't I supposed to have the answers to all of life's quandries? Apparently not.
It's hard to be happy when your kids aren't, ya know? During the course of the day, when you're bopping along, feeling good, all of a sudden it strikes you that someone you love deeply is miserable and then all the joy of the moment seems to disappear.
I want to be wise. I want to know the perfect thing to say or do. I want to have my children's eyes stop crying and have the light come back into them. I could do it when they were little--why I can't I do it anymore?
1 comment:
Well, they are teenagers, or awlfully close. They haven't yet learned that when something bad happens, that all they have to do is wait awhile and something else bad will come along. It's life. They haven't learned the real lesson in life is to look for and enjoy the good things between the bad. Their emotions are like roller coasters and as parents we are called to ride with them and love them. There is nothing we can do to fix it. It is something they have to grow out of. so don't beat yourself up. You did just as you were supposed to. Tomorrow or next week it will be something else. It's the angst that they live life with. And the burden we carry when they live with us. :D
Bev
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