You are never prepared. You are never ready when they let you know your IQ points have plummeted by half and suddenly you go from friend to foe. Being a parent of teens is the hardest, most meaningful, terrifying thing I have ever done in my life. It brings up all the mistakes I made, all the things I wish I could have taken back.... It reminds me exactly how ill equipped I am to do this alone.
I am reminded that I never was prepared for any of it. I was not prepared for the late nights of sheer, terrifying exhaustion when they were sick. I wasn't prepared for the tears on the first day of pre-school, tears that were mine, not theirs. I wasn't prepared for all the resurrected hopes and dreams, the tutus and dance shoes, the frogs and garter snakes. Tricycles in the yard and toys scattered in the living room were suddenly the easiest part of parenting, looking back.
Truer words could not have been spoken when I was told through knowing grins that if you wait until your are "ready," you will never have children. We are simply never prepared for the incredible, amazing, scary and frustrating task parenting is. Like ambitious teens we simply nod and smile, thinking silently that no one truly "gets it" and we will somehow make history with the flawless way we bring our children into this crazy life. There is no preparation for what is coming to us wrapped in soft blankets and tiny socks. We can, however, be prepared to turn to the One who makes all things possible, and hope we can listen over the din of our own fears and frustrations.
Just starting into this new stretch of the parenting race, I have to be completely honest. I am not prepared. I too thought I was going to be that parent that escaped the torturous emotional outbursts. I was going to dodge the bullets of being the stupidest parent alive, the imbecile, the dork...
Alas, I will not remain in that dreamland. I have been thrust into the reality that this is what will grow my children into the adults they will become. They will test and experiment, they will rebel and explore. Much like they did when they were two, this will form who they become for the rest of their lives.
I can choose to close my eyes and ignore the unpleasantries, I can clutch and cinch down in fear, or I can fall into submission on my knees before God and begin praying for the choices my children make to be guided ones. Guided by the faith that they have been shown and taught. That is how I will be prepared.
I will prepare each morning and each evening by kneeling in humility before God, begging Him to show me the path for my next step. I will ask that God show me the differences between me and my kids so that I can recognize and celebrate the fact that they are not me. They may make some of the same mistakes, but they are not me, and I can rejoice in that. I will gird myself with verse and try desperately to trust in God with all of my hopes and fears and I will fight the instinct to lock down their freedoms in response to avoiding that bad choice. After all, who would I be if I hadn't made the mistakes I did? My mistakes created who i am, but they don't define me now. I will prepare by praying for the strength to allow them to be wrong, to reap the consequences and to learn to move on.
You are never prepared for the heart wrenching experience of parenting, and that is probably a very good thing. If I had known, I am not sure I could have been brave enough to do it anyway. I am prepared to spend a lot of time on my knees in prayer until that time that my intelligence returns and I am once again a wealth of information. Hopefully I can get there before they have their own kids!
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