Parenting children from hard places

We've entered a new realm. Parenting children from hard places, even when you have had them since birth, is becoming more and more challenging as these children grow older. But I'm finding the challenge isn't them as much as it is me!

We had an interesting experience today. It was a first. It took me off guard. I didn't handle it like I wish I would have. I know many of you will find this hard to believe, but I was way too passive! I would have said way more if I had not been in shock at the time.

But there is fall out from the incident. Fall out that we as a family have to address. It's not fun! It puts me in a place where I have to deny my child the excuse of his/her past. I find myself saying over and over these days (with more than one child) that I know where you came from, but I am more concerned with where you are going. I know what they hear is that I don't love them because they don't care how hard it has been or still is. When what I am saying is, I love you so much I want better for you! When I want to sit and cry with them and just hold them and tell them I'm sorry and I don't want things to be hard for them anymore! Instead, I have to push them to try harder. I have to push them to overcome. Which in its own way is once again making life hard for them. It seems like a vicious circle. It's not that I don't care! It's that I care so much!

I remember watching an interview one time with the mother of a then adult woman who was missing her arms. She had lost them in an electrical accident as a young child. I remember the mother talking about how right after the accident her husband and she knew that they couldn't give into the disability. They had to be strong to make her strong. She talked about watching their daughter trying to do ordinary things and failing time and time again. But the mother didn't jump in and do them for her. Instead, she would leave the room and lock herself in her room and cry and scream because her daughter was struggling! Her daughter never knew this until she was an adult. But because the mother and father had chosen to allow the daughter to learn to deal with her disability without making excuses or even accommodations for it in most instances, the woman with no arms was a fully functioning member of society.

I don't have children with missing body parts, but I have children with missing heart parts! I feel like that mother right now. I can't allow them to use their missing heart parts as a disability...life won't care that they had a rough start! They have to learn how to successfully navigate life regardless of their start! But I find myself more and more wanting to go in my closet and scream and kick and cry out to God, "WHY?!!!! WHY did you not let them grow in my womb?! Why must they have suffered the way they did in the beginning?! Why do I have to clean up the mess that other adults have left in their lives?"

I know I will never know why! We live in a fallen world. Yes, God is sovereign. He could have stopped all the bad things that happened to each of them with the wiggle of His nose. But He didn't. I will never understand that in my human inability to understand God's ways. But I also know it breaks His heart just as much as it does mine! He grieves their losses more than even I as their momma does. My job...well, my job is to teach them that about Him! My biggest fear in parenting these children is that when they really deal with all that has happened, they will turn their back on God because He could have stopped it.

How do I teach them, Lord? How do I teach them the agape love that you have for them despite what has happened to them? How do I teach them to value character over comfort? How do I teach them in this selfish society to value Your worthiness to receive honor over their "rights"?

I wish they understood how much I feel their pain, but because I love them more than life itself, I can't stay in the pain - and I can't let them stay there either! God has placed them in our home because He desires far more beyond all they could think or ask of Him (Eph 3:20-21). My daily prayer is that I will find the appropriate balance between love and expectation to put them on the path out of their past and into the future full of hope and prosperity that God promises them in Jeremiah 29:11. Today I don't think I did that. Today I think I failed. I will apologize. I will ask forgiveness. I will get up in the morning and start a new day with new mercies and try to do better.

But one thing is for sure. No matter how hard. No matter how many times I may think I am in over my head, I wouldn't miss out on this journey with any of these children for the world! They are so worth it! I'm just not sure why God entrusted such amazing little people to a wreck like me! But this wreck will fight every day of her life to be all that God intends for me to be in the lives of these, His children!