Until I knew a better more clear way in front of me I knew otherwise. When I was quite young I had many thoughts and images of death. I recall believing forty year old people were old. Though I had never experienced loss in the physical sense, I imagined loss all around me. My insecurities crept in a blazed with cocky stature set on crippling me. "Leave me alone I wept. I have done nothing to you. I have done nothing to deserve this envelopment of fear"
While many girls my age were afraid of the monsters under the bed, I was awake, scared to death I would be left alone on earth without parents. Divorce has a way of doing that to you. It will steal away the good parts of your imagination in childhood and replace them with paralyzingly thoughts of doom. Once those insecurities make themselves at home inside of you, you feel doomed too. You will cling onto things bad for you. You will stay too long. Try too hard. Take too much. Overlook, pretend, dismiss, deny and cover up, all because you fear being alone. The real tragedy, if this is indeed you. You are already alone.
In my thirties I lost my mother to an untimely death. By then I was married with one child. I did not feel fear. I felt incredible loss. The kind of loss that you feel in your bones. I wonder if she ever feared dying, leaving her children? What did she lie awake thinking, feeling?
My children speak to me about their fears sometimes. Mostly they fear losing their parents too soon. I can only reassure them that only death can keep me from them. I will never allow the insecurity of a separation or divorce to make a home inside them. I owe them that. I want them to know the full potential of their God-given imagination on this earth. Imagining a life of their parents still together will never be a part of that.
Let them only worry of the monsters under their beds. As parents to our children we are early stewards of their happiness. We stamp out fear in them. We do not create fear in them because of our own foolishness and sluggishness to right the wrongs in our relationships. We cannot be selfish, serving our own self-interests. We must show love toward one another and patience and softness. We must show respect and eternal love. And when we truly can't then we must show much dignity in leaving.
Matthew 6:34 “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
While many girls my age were afraid of the monsters under the bed, I was awake, scared to death I would be left alone on earth without parents. Divorce has a way of doing that to you. It will steal away the good parts of your imagination in childhood and replace them with paralyzingly thoughts of doom. Once those insecurities make themselves at home inside of you, you feel doomed too. You will cling onto things bad for you. You will stay too long. Try too hard. Take too much. Overlook, pretend, dismiss, deny and cover up, all because you fear being alone. The real tragedy, if this is indeed you. You are already alone.
In my thirties I lost my mother to an untimely death. By then I was married with one child. I did not feel fear. I felt incredible loss. The kind of loss that you feel in your bones. I wonder if she ever feared dying, leaving her children? What did she lie awake thinking, feeling?
My children speak to me about their fears sometimes. Mostly they fear losing their parents too soon. I can only reassure them that only death can keep me from them. I will never allow the insecurity of a separation or divorce to make a home inside them. I owe them that. I want them to know the full potential of their God-given imagination on this earth. Imagining a life of their parents still together will never be a part of that.
Let them only worry of the monsters under their beds. As parents to our children we are early stewards of their happiness. We stamp out fear in them. We do not create fear in them because of our own foolishness and sluggishness to right the wrongs in our relationships. We cannot be selfish, serving our own self-interests. We must show love toward one another and patience and softness. We must show respect and eternal love. And when we truly can't then we must show much dignity in leaving.
Matthew 6:34 “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
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