Being a mom had its challenges when my kids were little. We faced many trials that often caused me to question myself and whether they would ever make it to adulthood. I really thought it was hard. And I was tired and weary most of the time.
I had no clue what hard really looked like as a parent until recently. I had faced losing a child, and holding one I thought would die. They graduated and moved away and through it all I was constantly reminded I had no control. More recently it became clear that being the parent of adult children is even harder. The work is not as physical but it can be more heart breaking and emotionally draining.
On April 25th at 3:10 am I received a text from my son. It read:
“I'm giving you a quick update. About and hour and 10 minutes ago, a tornado hit our parking lot. Nobody is hurt, I'm okay. I had a panic attack. Rebecca and some dorm mates helped me through it. I'm okay. But there's some bad damage. Pray for all of campus. For sure quite a few cars got damaged and/or totaled.”
I don’t always wake up when I get a text at that hour but for some reason I did and I told myself they were okay go back to sleep and tomorrow you can see how bad it was. Well the tears barely stopped as I looked at videos and pictures of the damage. The picture below is from right outside his dorm. There was so much to see and a lot of sorrow as there were also lives lost. But the hardest part for me was that I wasn’t there. My son struggles with storms and I wasn’t there to walk with him and my daughter as they faced an act of nature.
Every day as a parent is hard and when your kids are young you think that one day it won’t be so hard. But that’s just a lie. I fully believe that no matter the age of the children parenting is a challenge we can only manage with prayer and faith. There are big challenges and little challenges and sometimes we feel way overwhelmed and under appreciated. But the real blessing comes when we look at how our kids face the hard times and learn to be independent and strong.
I am so blessed to see my kids face their struggles, make choices and face their consequences and still stay positive. My prayer is that in the days ahead as we face weddings, one trip further away they ever and many more hard and fun times they will remember that God is the central strength to run to. Seeking Him first will always get you through the next day. And I pray this momma heart remembers that too. Because there are still many hard days ahead.
I love you my babies. I thank God for my parents and don’t know how they survived all the years with us.
