“Making the decision to have a child is momentous.  It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”  ~Elizabeth Stone

This statement has never been more true for me then in the last few weeks. The start of this school year has been a challenge not only for my son, who started the third grade, but for us as parents. It was a quick dip into the waters of the real world. Waters we were not at all prepared for or even thought we were near. Dylan just turned 9 and to us is still our little boy. But we have had the opportunity to take some very hard situations and begin to teach him lessons through his struggles. But as every parent knows when we set out to teach our children they always end up teaching us.

We are blessed to be able to send our children to a wonderful school where these lessons, even at their hardest, are buffered by talented & loving teachers and parents. (And since I have started down this path I just want to thank all of you who have been on this journey with me the last few weeks. Your love, support and kindness helped me keep my footing as we walked along this bumpy new path.)

The challenges that have been set before us were ones that caused Scott & I to look at every aspect of our parenting and to really search for what our beliefs are and make sure they are what we want to pass on to our children. Looking back at the beginning of these trials I can see how far we have come, now I can see that we have gotten to the place where I can reflect on the lessons hidden inside. This is always my favorite thing about hardships. I know deep down that there is a lesson in every situation and the deeper the pain the bigger the lesson. I have started to develop the ability to know when the situation arises that I need to find the meaning and this helps me step outside of myself and my emotions to see the big picture. Don’t get me wrong, this does not mean that I don’t get sucked into the emotions and the stress, but it has given me the ability to at least keep the light at the end of the tunnel visible, and for that I am grateful!

Watching your children suffer in any way is such a painful experience for a parent. We want to take it all away and make everything better. And with my personality I want it done now! I want them to be happy and free of worry and pain! So watching him painfully find his way through some tough situations has been unbearable. But we are starting to make progress and see more and more of his happy, loving self coming back to us. That is what it is about, to guide our children through life and see that they still remain whole at the core of their inner self. For me, that is how I measure my success.

In many ways I can see how Scott and I have taken this on as a challenge. An unspoken challenge to look at our parenting, our beliefs, our values and our relationship. To assess what we believe in and to be sure our priorities are in the correct places. Without these challenges we would not have taken the time to learn more, to research more, to reach out to others and to communicate to each other about these unspoken agreements we live with as partners and as parents. So in looking back at all we have learned and reassessed, we are so deeply grateful to our son, our deeply sensitive and loving child, for allowing us this opportunity to check in with ourselves. To take our family up to the next level. There is no love deeper than the love I feel for my children. They are my gift to the world. My gift of something better than myself. I know that they are going to make a difference, for they have already made a difference in me!

In Love,

Michelle

“It’s not only children who grow.  Parents do too.  As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours.  I can’t tell my children to reach for the sun.  All I can do is reach for it, myself.”  ~Joyce Maynard