I once made the mistake of praying
for patience prior to looking up examples in the bible of how God teaches
patience (let me give you a hint….the word patience is sometimes translated at
LONGSUFFERING). Long story short God
doesn’t allow take backs. After that I
have been way more careful. If I get
whiff that the message at church Sunday is entitled “How to keep your faith
when you get laid off” I am not going to church that week. But last week I didn’t have my guard up
because the message was called “Friends”.
Who doesn’t love friends? Well
apparently God had found a work-around to my genius method of avoiding growing
up.
Our verse was Proverbs 15: 11-12,
“timely advice is lovely, like golden apples in a silver basket. To one who
listens, valid criticism is like a gold earring or other gold jewelry”. Clearly God was strongly suggesting we
listen to criticism because it was just as valuable as precious jewels. I got a slight twinge of “oh no, God is
trying to teach me something”. The next
day, leaving no room for misinterpretation in God’s timing, I was confronted
with just this situation. How would I
respond?
If you guess that this issue
centers on my daughter and my warrior parenting skills you are correct. There are many words I use to describe my
daughter: “high energy, bold, strong willed, tenacious, even a bit sassy. Mostly these are seen as positive traits;
she is resilient and adaptive and has a spirit that is unbreakable. But this can also be translated as “fully
cocked and ready to go off at any time”.
These full-on freak-outs have been mostly reserved for small family
occasions and holidays but not today!
At a friend’s house, in a full display of “shock and horror”, we all
witnessed one of Bella’s high drama performances in emotional overload. I was left speechless and unfortunately,
mostly action-less. My friends were
forced to end the night and I was devastated.
Couldn’t they accept Bella for who she was? It wasn’t until after some honest
conversation that I had to admit that I might not be seeing the situation
clearly.
Because of this criticism, I was
able to remove some really thick blinders allowing me to see these outbreaks
for what they were. I was allowing my
child to explode on people and I didn’t assume the authority to control these
situations. I wasn’t blind to what
Bella was doing (trust me there is no missing those fireworks). But I was blind to why it was happening. It wasn’t until I heard honest wisdom from a
completely different perspective that I was able to get to the root of the
problem. No surprise here, the problem
was me, not Bella.
Now a true warrior parent
(especially of the complicated medical variety) can come up with an action plan
pretty quick. I set boundaries, consequences,
and a came up with a long list of Parenting 101 stuff to set into motion. But these systems only last as long as
they are maintained. I had to be the one
to maintain them. This is not really one
of my spiritual gifts. In order for me
to really get behind this program I had tackle my complacency. I had to know why I was so bad and being the
bad guy. I am really good at
understanding and acceptance but we don’t need any of that right now. I had to be tough. What was holding me back?
Cutting through the excuses I had
to tackle the Sick Kid defense head on.
When you focus so much on your child’s health, a few things are bound to
slip through the cracks. But my hope in
a long life for Bella had to correspond with my behavior. We had to leave those excuses in the past and
move from crisis mode to thriving mode.
It meant not letting me or Bella blame her disease for her bad
behavior. There is no doubt there will
be days when she is scared, sad or mad because of Cystic Fibrosis, but we can
come up with healthier ways of coping.
For instance my go-to emotional release has always been turning up the
music real loud and singing at the top of my lungs.
The biggest blind spot of all was
in my parenting philosophy. I was
essentially giving her a free pass on grand emotional displays. I had to reach pretty far back to work out
why. Having a conversation with my mom
helped. Apparently, there are some
similarities between my childhood behavior and my daughters (shocker!!) However, I can tell you that my mom had ZERO
blind spot and ZERO tolerance for my shenanigans. I was “parented” effortlessly into at least
being well behaved in the proper situations.
I don’t think I appreciated my mother’s skills until now and perhaps I
even resented them a teeny bit. By
resenting my mother’s control all these years (love you mom!!) I overcompensated without realizing it;
giving Bella the freedom to emote all over the place in a way I never
could.
Although this experience wasn’t
without pain, it feels wonderful to have the blind spot removed! The greatest gift I can give my daughter is
to show her how to express all the crazy emotions in appropriate ways and
environments. I want to ensure she
doesn’t feel her emotions are wrong, just that she has to control and at times
contain them. I have awesome visions of
her at a business function years from now….getting frustrated at someone and
having to run outside to explode and then calmly come back in. And she will thank her mom -- but still forget
to call me and tell me that. I can’t
wait to see what Bella overcompensates with her children. They will probably get to eat salad for
dinner and never have to go to the doctor!
All this makes me curious. Do we all have a childhood versions of ourselves
controlling a part of our parenting, safely hidden behind blind spots?
