Lessons my kids have taught me about how I fit into the Gospel plan is really on my mind lately. I just felt the need to write it down. Knowing my kids has helped me come to know myself. Who'da thought? We read and hear so often the idea that you have to grow up and "know who you are fully" in order to be able to be a parent and guide someone else. It has been through parenting that I have grown up and know who I am. We hear the same advice about marriage. "You have to fully know who you are and fully love yourself before you can love someone else." Also the opposite turned out to be true in my case. But that is a blog post for a very small private audience. :) I'm going to speak for myself here, to my experience. I know everyone has their own. We all learn our lessons differently on different paths. Not everyone is going to get married and have kids. This is just how my life lessons have happened.
So to my kids... My oldest has mild Asperger's. It was scary when he was about 5th-6th grade. We had no idea what his deal was or how to parent him. The hardest part for me was watching him hurt. He felt so left out and alone. I could write volumes about the wrongs done to him and how Mama Bear pissed off half the neighborhood. I opened his journal one time and read some really painful disparaging thoughts that scared me and made my heart just ache for him. I would listen to him cry about how he works so hard to be a good friend to those around him, but nobody ever reciprocates or showed they cared about him. I knew how worthy he was to be cared for. I would tell him what a caring good friend he is, how smart he is, how compassionate he is, how lucky anyone would be to have him as a friend. What was interesting about that time is that I was feeling the same
way as Ryan... Really isolated here in St. George, hadn't made friends,
etc. Just kinda feeling left out and alone, LIKE RYAN. I realized for the first time that I was looking in the mirror. It was like I could hear HF echoing my words and thoughts to Ryan back to me. There wasn't anyone around at the time that could relate to Ryan. I could see that easily, but he couldn't. I hadn't thought that was also the case for me. There wasn't anything wrong with Ryan then, and there wasn't anything wrong with me. Parenting Ryan has taught me countless lessons about friendship and the importance of just being good regardless of what comes back to you. The strength to stand alone. That was the first time I could see what a great divine teacher Family is.
Lesson number two, my second son, has what I guess would be just an ADHD personality. He struggled in school because he couldn't sit still and listen or work. For ALL of elementary he was scolded and told he was the bad kid. He was always getting in trouble. Somewhere in 5th grade we decided to medicate him mostly because I was so sick of him being treated poorly by adults. I just wanted him to feel like the good kid that fit in and did what was expected. It helped, but he was so far behind by that time that he still has a hard time keeping up. He still struggles as a ninth grader with reading and just studying in general because he really didn't learn those skills at the age that most kids do. I used to get frustrated with him until I realized again that I was looking in the mirror at me in Jr. High and High school. I mastered the art of covering up how hard things were for me. Changed Fs to As on midterm reports, just skipped the classes that I didn't want to take the tests for, signed up to be in this or that club so that I could just conveniently be gone serving the school in some way during the class that I didn't understand. By high school I was so far behind that I just had to take the easiest classes offered in order to get a decent grade. I've always been really self conscious of my lack of academic achievements... until I saw Noah in the mirror. I realized that because I can relate to how he feels and what he is going through, I know how to guide him. I know what he needs. I believe in him and his ability to be a success... so why not me? Why do I call myself stupid when I know with every part of me that HE ISN'T. I know the things that he is great at that other kids getting great grades AREN'T good at. He will be a success. It's too late for me to do Jr. High and High school again, but I can still be a success at what I am good at. He has taught me that.
My third son is testing me in a whole new way. He cannot be positive about a situation to save his life. He worries about everything. He's depressed on Christmas because he feels guilty about the money we've spent and that the Christmas season is almost over. He's depressed on the night of his concert when he got up in a club and sang and played the bass and guitar perfectly at 11 yrs old because he said one lyric wrong (that no one knew) and because his friends didn't tell him that he did awesome then he must have been terrible! His mood is entirely dictated by his circumstances and other people. And even if the other people and circumstances are positive, he will find a way to make it negative. "I won't write a song for reflections because I know it won't be as good as so-and-so's. Which means it will be terrible." So you can guess that more than a few times I have been listening to him complain to me about some worry or sad event, and I start to roll my eyes and tell him how silly it is to feel that way and tell him how talented and handsome and kind and awesome he is, when I realize... Yep, I do this sometimes too. I will compare my life to others', put theirs in the best light possible and mine in the worst and then tell myself I suck. My life isn't even worth living. I'm not even going to go to the lunch because I'm not worth knowing. No one will like me. Crap, I. AM. JOSH. yikes. Gotta stop it. This one has been my most recent effort and is coming along like the others. I still catch myself losing patience with his negativity and have to apologize a lot. No number of years in therapy with the best therapists could convince me these truths about negative vs. positive thinking. I had to realize it through seeing it in someone I love and helping them.
My daughter. Anyone that knows me for any amount of time knows how in love I am with my daughter. The most spiritual experience of my life was giving birth to her. Fullness of Joy is the closest I can get to describing how that felt. The craziest part of the whole experience was that at the same time that I was experiencing that euphoria, I got the worst case of Postpartum Depression I've ever had. (This was also, by the way, the same time we were dealing with the Asperger's and the school problems with my second.) By the time Sarah was a year old I was suicidal. I would look at her feeling the purest love I could imagine, and be feeling so much shame and self loathing at the same time it was unbearable. When I realized that I was actually contemplating leaving this perfect beautiful girl without a mom I reached out to the right D.O. for help. *SIDE NOTE: I have asked for medication after deliveries before and the doctor and therapist told me to get a gym membership instead. It is part of the reason it took me so long to ask for help this time, and one reason I was feeling more shame than before. I will be forever grateful to my provider for looking into my eyes and saying "That would be terrible if your children didn't have you." and just writing the prescription. I didn't believe her yet, but the medication helped me understand her in time.* So one day I was holding Sarah looking at her perfectness, and there was a little voice in my head that said in feelings, not really words, "Sarah is to you as you are to me. This is how I feel about you. You are perfectness. You're beautiful. Even when you screw up I love it because it's you!" It hit me like a smack in the forehead.. or a hug, or both. I just sat there with Sarah crying at the realization that someone loves me the way I love Sarah. I knew that there was nothing she would ever do that could make me not love her. Nothing she could ever do that would make it difficult to be her mom. I felt for the first time that there is someone that will never ashamed of me or wishing I was different in any way. Just enjoying watching me grow and sometimes screw up, there to help and guide. I had never understood it before until Sarah. (I guess because Sarah is a girl? I don't know.) I still had to retrain myself how to think normally for years after that and learn how to turn off the depressive thoughts. I continue to catch myself today when I feel it coming on. It takes practice to pull out of depression. It's hard work, but it can be done. Anyway - Sarah taught me about my relationship with my heavenly parents. It helped me understand the depths of the love they have for me.
I wasn't at all ready to get married and I wasn't "prepared" to be a parent. But it's a good thing I did them both or I never would have grown up and figured out who I am. I am so indebted to these souls that took the risk and gambled that I would figure it out!
