Where to begin

I hope that your holiday weekend was well received. Ours was a much needed rest. Though it began with a moment that I am sure no one in the family will soon forget. As a parent, it is always a difficult event when a child has come to the point when one of those 'life experiences' must be learned. Our weekend began with one of them. 

It forced me to recount a time in my own life when I learned that very lesson. I must confess that I did not handle it with as much grace as I had hoped when as a child I vowed I would one day extend to my own, but luckily, recovery from such a faux pas was not as horrendous as my own experience. The relationships are slowly being restored and growth has been spotted. Not just in the child that experienced the trauma but in the others as well. In myself. In my other half. And in how we are all relating to each other.

'Why must these things happen?'

 It is THE Question of all the ages. Each one of us struggles with this very postulation. Just as a caterpillar must struggle out of their chrysalis, we too must struggle. Struggle to earn experience. Struggle to develop discipline. Struggle to gain maturity. Struggle to become the beautiful free person that God intends for us to be. 

I wanted to be that chrysalis for my child, that protective resting place, enveloping them in their time of growth, when that occurred. Instead, I was forced to watch them from the sidelines as they struggled out of the one they were already in.  

As the weekend is officially over, I can find in hindsight that in reality it was more traumatic for me than for any one of them. For yes, a horrible, but anticipated, thing happened. Though much worse, I watch transfixed as each one of my children matured in front of my eyes.

And that, my friends, is the saddest thing to have to see.