Can I love too much??

"Son"day, March 4, 2012

 

Good morning, Readers!  It's a beautiful morning in North Texas.  The air is crisp and it feels so good to take deep breaths and ingest all of the beauty of nature.  It seems odd to walk outside and not be able to sit on the back porch.  I do walk through the gardens though and check the perennials, rose bushes, and trees.  Every day there are new buds!!  This upcoming Thursday, I will have new gardens to stroll through.

 

I am sure you have heard the adage ... everything in moderation.  If that is true then is excess of everything bad?  Can loving someone in the extreme be unhealthy for you or the one you are doting on?  There are some people who might disagree with me but I believe the answer is yes.  God wants us to lead balanced lives for a good reason.  I have found that loving someone in excess can often lead to too much care and concern on my part, with the result that the other person becomes totally dependent on me and cannot think for themselves.  In my case, I hated to see anyone hurt, cry, or be in need.  In the case of my son, I became an overprotective mother until one day a good friend said to me, "Dottie, you are ruining your son ... he needs to be allowed to be a boy."  I argued that you cannot love a child too much.  After all, he was only four and his father and I were divorcing.  When another person said the same thing, I realized that I needed to let go.

 

Let go and let God

 

I believe that the Lord prepared me for the months and years to come.  My son has no depth perception and I was told that he would never play sports without great difficulty if at all.  He needed coke bottle glasses and I wondered how many would call him four eyes.  I cried, "Lord, help me to help my son."

 

When my preschooler got his glasses, he grabbed them and said, "Mom, I can see!"  He wouldn't take them off.  I would go into his room at night to check on him and he would be asleep, his glasses askew on his face.  I would gently lift them off and smile.  To the nearly blind, were coke bottle glasses so bad??  The one with the disability wasn't my son ... it was me and my own fear that he would be sad, teased, or God only knows what else!

 

Be part of the solution, not the problem

 

My next challenge with my son was sports. "Mom, I want to play soccer."  I wondered if I should say anything about the depth perception.  I didn't and signed him up.  I brought him to practice and watched as he struggled to judge where the ball was.  He cried, I cried (in private).  It wasn't long and the coach suggested he play goalie.  Goalie?  In my own mind, I went over all the reasons why he shouldn't be a goalie and then asked Tommy if he wanted to be goalie.  "Yep, I do. I can do it, I know I can."  Once again I sat on the bleachers with the other parents (I was the one chewing my nails).  Know what?  I watched him struggle.  I watched him fail over and over.  He'd hang his head and I'd tell him, "Tomorrow is another day, son."  Within a season, my son had mastered two things, he became a game winning goalie and could kick the soccer ball into the net with accuracy.  He didn't know he had depth perception problems and I never told him.

 

Willingness is the key

 

The next challenge after dealing with sports was driving.  Oh my goodness, we would go out to practice driving and I would nearly have a heart attack.  He couldn't judge where the curb was and was hitting those chunks of cement over and over.  When I got to the point of needing to put tape over my mouth, I signed him up for driver's training.  He was elated.  I could sleep nights.  Tires?  He went through tires like candy until he could master those corners.  I told him, "Can't you just make left turns?"  He would smile..

 

I say, "I can't."

God says "I can."

Know what?  I think I'll let Him.

 

What is our responsibility as parents and grandparents?  Can we love to the point that our loved ones are not able to fend for themselves?  What happens when they face any trouble if they aren't taught how to deal with life's adversities?  In Plano, Texas, there was a huge number of teens committing suicide.  Why were their problems so big that they thought they couldn't handle them?  Aren't we as parents and grandparents supposed to give them the tools they can use to mature and face life?

 

No pain, no gain

 

I am throwing out a lot of questions and it is my hope that they make you, my Readers, think.  Because of my background and my quest to be whole, I did a lot of research on children, parenting, and relationships.  I am one of the strongest advocates for children on this earth.  When I see children being abused spiritually, mentally, emotionally, or physically, I see red.  I drop to my knees and cry out to my heavenly Father for their protection.  "The children, Lord, the children ... protect them."

 

Let it begin with me

 

Don't we want to raise children and grandchildren who become mature adults who are self-sufficient without being on the look out for someone to depend on?  Don't we want to raise children who are able to shoulder responsibility?  How can this happen if they are never given responsibility or held accountable for anything?  Respect for self AND others means balance...

 

 Practice an attitude of gratitude

 

Have you ever met anyone who cannot accept any feedback whether it is positive or negative?  I've met quite a few people like that along the road in my journey of life and once defensiveness rears it's ugly head, communication shuts down.  If children are used to being overprotected and pampered and only fed positiveness, why would they think they did something wrong?  We do right, that's called being truthful and honest.  We do wrong, that's called being deceitful, dishonest, self-centered, and just plain WRONG!!  We need to understand that both choices have consequences.

 

As children and adults we need to get along with one another.  Relationships are tough at best and if a child only learns to take without giving, they become selfish and have that sense of entitlement.  I would talk at length with the counselor who did my childhood trauma therapy about this.  I am and always have been a giver.  If you need something, if I have it, I will give it to you and not think twice.

 

That being said, I have been prey for takers in life.  People enjoy the attention and love I have to give.  I have been accused of being an enabler and, yes, that's true.  I was married to a man who physically abused me.  Did I file charges and put him in jail?  Heck no, I couldn't.  I didn't want him to suffer that humility.  Now, that's sick.  I sure needed all the help I could get to realize that "self" mattered and I didn't need to suffer for someone else's bad choices.

 

Formula for failure: try to please everyone

 

Readers, I  have had to learn that as a human being, I made and will continue to make mistakes.  My children did not come with how-to manuals and my own growth has been one step at a time.  That's why I share my journey and encourage others.  My family knows that no matter what they do or say, I will always love them.  Does that mean they don't have to suffer the consequences of their own choices?  Absolutely not. It is in making mistakes that we grow and mature.  As anyone who has survived life into old age will tell you, life's a process and challenges are handled one day at a time.

 

We are not responsible for what happened to us.

We are responsible for our recovery and our own choices.

 

I have been fortunate to have had some of the best counselors available as well as a passion to grow and be the best that God created me to be.  Our children are not ours, they are God's on loan to us.  It is our job to give them balance, roots and wings.  It is our job to allow them the freedom to fail and be self-sufficient.  Now, that was a tough one for me.

 

I have struggled with control because I felt everything bad that happened was my fault.  I had to be perfect.  I had to have perfect children.  I  had to appear perfect to the world.  The problem came when the walls of my life came tumbling down and I was left stripped and covered with rawness.  It was then that my Savior lovingly took me in His arms, covered me with His coat of grace, and gently dabbed the sores with kindness.  He let me know that He was there and I had to realize that every bad thing I went through was Father-filtered for my own good.  I am strong in faith and spirit not because of the good times but because of the bad.  I will always be grateful and I will never stop telling others, that what He did for me, He could do for them.  That has been the most important thing I have given my children and the most important thing that they will hand down to their children.

 

I pray that you will have the most amazing day!  My granddaughter is competing in a cheerleading event in Atlanta, Georgia.  Kudos to you, Madison, for daring to do more than has been asked of you and for being the base that your flier can depend on.

 

Always remember, my Readers, that you are loved and prayed for.  I am calling this a day of freedom for every parent and grandparent who thinks they alone control the destiny of their charges!

 

BROKEN DREAMS

 

As children bring

their broken toys

With tears for us to mend,

I brought my broken dreams

to God

because He was my friend.

But then instead of leaving Him

in peace to work alone,

I hung around

and tried to help

With ways that

were my own.

At last I snatched them back

and cried,

"How can You be so slow?"

"My child," He said,

"What could I do?

You never did let go."

~~Author Unknown