I felt the danger and it was taking its toll. As parents, we lived in a constant state of fear over each phone call, each curfew, each ring of the doorbell. It wasn’t just stressful for us, it was also having an impact on our other two children. It’s one thing when someone threatens your family but it becomes so much worse when that threat comes FROM your family. What are you supposed to do when your own child becomes your “enemy”? He had no idea how he put us all at risk, every single day. As he made foolish, dangerous decisions, he posed a threat to himself and others, which meant he brought that threat home to us. With each risk he took, our hearts were made more and more vulnerable. We feared what his future held and what our’s held because we loved him. We wondered if our Continue Reading
We Are Made to Brave Imperfect Motherhood
Before experiencing motherhood for myself, I had this expectation that I was going to be a better mother than my mother ever was. That is if I was ever going to be a mother at all. To be clear, I had a healthy childhood and my mother did a masterful job at caring for all of her children but as far as I could see motherhood was a tiring, messy task, with little to no reward. These thoughts were so deeply ingrained, were it up to me, I would have lived my life to ensure that children were not on my radar. Then I met my husband and began to see the possibilities of love. We were married when I was 22, and I had my first child at 23 which was manageable at first. Then our family of three became a family of four...then five. Somehow I went from not wanting kids at all to parenting Continue Reading