I am often encouraging parents and caregivers to honour sadness in their children, and today I take my own medicine and honour my own sadness. As I finished typing the last word of today's thought about time going by quickly, I was suddenly and unexpectedly overcome with soul wrenching sadness. And while I know that time stops for no one, I don't like this today. Today I want time to stand still, I want my children to stay these ages for a while longer. I ache at the notion of them growing up today. I know, I know....independence, maturation, opening of wings and letting go are all healthy parts of a child's spiritual experience. I also realize that these are all healthy parts of my own spiritual growth as a mother, too. But today I don't like it. I don't want to pretend that I feel okay about this today!
Today I want to gather up my daughters, smother them with kisses and love and selfishly keep them here where I can have them to myself. I want to hide them from Father Time.
When they are in school in the Fall, I wonder what I will do with myself. For ten years, I have had the ultimate privilege of staying at home with them full time. I am eternally grateful for a husband who has honoured this choice, honoured the investment of time into our children and has seen it as the full time blessing it has been. He has always said that it has been easy for him to go to work every day knowing that the girls were at home with me. I wouldn't change a thing, not one moment of the last ten years, and some of those moments were not easy. I realize that part of my sadness is for myself, not them. I sometimes feel like a leaf wafting around in the breeze, unsure of which branch I belong to. Where will this leaf anchor itself in the Fall? I thought I would return to teaching, but after a rather truth testing experience two weeks ago, I realize that this profession, while noble and honourable, is no longer my truth. It could have been so easy: I was being offered the opportunity of a part time teaching assignment in a school five minutes from my house in a school Board that is hardly hiring right now. I would have been teaching a subject I could teach with my eyes closed and working with children, among my most favourite humans! Benefits, pension, excellent salary, vacation that would be the same as my children's. WHY is this not enough? I tried to convince myself that this would be a good idea, that I would be happy...but I knew deep in my soul that this was not true. The more I stand in my truth, the harder it is to hide from it. There it is: the double edged sword of walking my most authentic path.
So as I let the sadness, the uncertainty, and the anxiety wash through me, I shake it all down to what seems to be a recurring lesson: trust. Spirit encourages me to trust myself, trust that I DO know what is best for me and that when I trust, the Universe will pave the way for all that is in my highest and greatest good. I must also trust time. I trust that my children are becoming who they are in the time they have chosen, and that the biggest gift I can give them is to stay out of their way, just off to the side with what they need to continue on. Honouring their truth is also honouring that they are growing up, changing, morphing into the wonderful beings that they are.
Aahhh...suddenly I feel a bit better. The writing helps with finding the truth, the wisdom, the teaching and learning that gets brought to my life each day. Part of my human experience on Mother Earth is fulfilling my soul's deepest desires. And while I am not exactly sure what that will be, I trust that walking an honest path will help reveal all I am to know.
So, it's okay, Father Time...I know you tick on and with it, I will tick on, too, commiting myself to enjoying each moment life brings and trusting that all is well....in all ways!
Love Christine
xo
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