As I snuggle your brother endlessly, I'm saddened at how many sweet moments I missed out on with you. The physical connection that we could have formed might have moved us into a deeper healthier relationship for life. Scooping you up in my lap to read to you may have changed your outlook on books altogether. Being there as you first started to maneuver through life more independently, to guide your decisions and direction, could have meant so much. But I didn't have those chances.
I'm more sorry about the chances I have had, and blown. I'm sorry I've been so far from a perfect parent. There are no "perfect" parents, but there are many who are much closer than I am.
I'm sorry, that although I was never a "young" mom as the world uses the phrase, adopting you at the ripe "old" age of 30, in many ways I was still as clueless and inexperienced as a 20 year-old. I had a lot to learn about myself, and that was at your expense. I'm sorry. Children generally have the benefit of their parents being married before they're born. As if you didn't have enough load to carry, I added to you the burden of revealing to me my own selfishness.
Other than the dog, you were my first addition to the family. With Ruby, I could maintain the façade, and actually legitimately believe, that I was a selfless giving person. I had sold everything I owned and left everyone I knew to move to Bolivia, where I served during the day as a veterinarian and many evenings in orphanages and ministries. I had myself, and maybe others, convinced that I was altruistic, devoted, even self-sacrificing.
It wasn't until you moved into my home, my personal sacred space, and started to crowd me out that I realized just how much of me there was. I had been able to give, and serve, and love others in my spare time, sometimes inconveniently, but more often on a schedule that allowed for my own autonomy, until there was you there needing me all day long and in the middle of the night, interrupting my life, reflecting my selfishness to me like a distorted mirror. The problem was, the mirror wasn't distorted, my image of myself was.
Usually, one starts with a spouse up in their grill all the time, before adding needy kids to the equation. It's a more natural progression, as husbands are fairly mature, and able to care for themselves for the most part. So after adjusting to their messes, idiosyncrasies, and differences in schedule, it's a smoother transition to move deeper into the realm of living communally by adding offspring that can't do anything for themselves. Also, husbands choose their wives and commit to love them despite their self-centeredness. You have no such covenant with me.
But, alas, you had the privilege of pushing all my buttons for the first time, and showing me just exactly how many buttons I had, before anyone else had ever found many of them. For that I am truly sorry.
There were so many things that have been unfair to you in this world, I shouldn't have added another. I didn't even know I was involuntarily putting on a mask each day for a world who was probably doing the same, allowing us to interact without getting too real. That is, until you revealed the me what was under my mask. Finding out how far I could stretch, how little patience I had even on my best attempts, and how selfish I was deep under the mask, all that should have been Daddy's job. When you and I got comfortable, as people do in close quarters over time, our manners faded, our tones changed, our self-control dwindled. That was understandable for you, an 8 year-old girl with no training in such things, but not for me. I apologize that you had to be my guinea pig while learning to interact intimately with another human being.
Your father and your brother should thank you for your service to the family as you took one for the team, teaching me to die to self a little more each day. It's never easy to be the pioneer, but if anyone was strong enough, you were. And, I think the fact that we struggled alone together for so long, has bonded us, not the way cuddling you in your formative years would have, but bonded us nonetheless.
I'm sorry, you had to be the one to point out the flaws I had hidden even from myself. But I'm not sorry that you pushed me to the end of myself, because in those times when I ran out of me, I found Jesus most fully. And only with Him, can I be a parent worth having...
No comments:
Post a Comment