Tag: overcoming

Blog Refresh

I’ve been writing this blog for quite a while now, but this past year I pulled back a lot on the personal blogs and have mostly just written about our free house. It was a needed break, and felt like something God-lead. Now I am feeling like it might be time to start writing again. A lot of things have changed since I first started this blog in 2018 and now I feel like I need to do a re-introduction. So here goes.

I am a missionary kid. I grew up in Eastern Kentucky, Haiti and bush Alaska. My husband is also a missionary kid who grew up in Nicaragua. When we first got married we spent some time in Alaska and Chile and then settled down in East Tennessee. We have ten kids. (And one daughter-in-law!) Four of our kids are adults and have left home and I am proud of them, and miss them a lot. I’ve got six kids left at home ranging from age nine to eighteen. Though we have homeschooled in the past, my kids are now all in school. I teach piano lessons and help teach choir at my younger children’s school. And then I keep the house running for eight people. 

I love reading. I am the quintessential bookworm, have been since I was in second grade. My husband also loves reading and we’ve managed to pass this down to most of our children. A cozy evening at our house often looks like a bunch of people sitting around on couches reading books. 

This past year our family was gifted the house next door. Turned out it was a hoarder house, so now we have slowly been cleaning it out. My husband works in the construction industry, so this is right up his alley. We look forward to eventually restoring the house and making it usable again, and posting updates about that project on this blog has been motivating for me. 

If you want to know the foundation blocks of who I am, I would say, I was a broken, lost person who has been rescued by Jesus. Every moment of my life has been an example of his grace and mercy. He has saved me from my desperate places, and has slowly but surely been leading me down a path that leads to life and wholeness and joy. There’s been a lot of bumps, holes, rocky places, dangerous cliffs etc, but I can say confidently, that Jesus’ hand has been on my life since I was conceived and he has held me fast and brought me through, and continues to bring me through every challenge, pain and danger that life has thrown at me. 

Walking with Jesus does not mean that you live a charmed life with minimal challenges. It rather means you live a victorious life as you have God himself walking with you through each hardship that comes your way. I have my own grocery list of challenges I deal with regularly. Anxiety and depression. Fear. Self-righteousness. Self-centeredness. Fear of rejection. I can look back and see how I have improved greatly in all these areas, but every once in a while one or more of these will make themselves center-stage in my life again and I have to put into practice the things I’ve already learned and also learn more about how to overcome in these areas. 

This blog is an invitation for you to come walk with me through everyday life and see up-close and personal what walking with Jesus looks like. The good, the bad, and the ugly. 

I look forward to connecting with you all again!

Our Adult Children

This past week I’ve had converstaions with not one, not two, but three different people about Grown Up Children. About how we need a support group for parents in this stage of life. How our adult children need a support group as they recover from our poor parenting. About shifting our approach to our children and learning how to truly let them go to be adults. 

This is a touchy topic for me. I struggle with feeling a lot of guilt, shame, and bewilderment as I try to navigate this stage of life. The bewilderment comes as I realize that all those promises that people gave you… If you just homeschool, if you have daily devotions, if you eat all your meals together as a family, if you just stay connected…If you do A, B, and C, then you will produce a child who enters adulthood gracefully. They will be wise. They will make the best decision every single time. They will have a strong direction for their life and they will pursue it in a straight line, from the moment they graduate high school. They will teach Sunday School and be one of those people that others count as a Great Role Model. All you have to do is A, B, and C… All of these promises are empty. But I think they are empty because they are working off the wrong assumptions. 

I think, as young parents, we start off with unreasonable (wrong) expectations. Maybe, we remember how responsible and mature we were as young adults, and we presume that we are going to make carbon copies of ourselves. Or maybe, we had a rough start in life, and so we parent with the express purpose of making sure our kids don’t turn out like we did. Either way, we tend to forget that these children we are raising are their own person. They have their own strengths and weaknesses. They have their own free will. They have their own lives to chart out. We are called to train and equip our children. Teach them the difference between right and wrong. Teach them about God and all that his Word says about him. Teach them all the skills they need to succeed in our culture. But, what they do with all that information, that’s their choice. And it is not a reflection on us what they choose to do. 

I think we get really hung up on our own self-consequence when it comes to our grown up kids. We tie their behavior to our own self-worth. My grown up kid is doing things I don’t agree with. It must mean I was a horrible parent. My grown up kid is struggling. I have failed. My friends and family don’t agree with the lifestyle my grown up kid has chosen, they must all think I did something wrong. Woe is me. 

And this comes back to letting go of our grown up kids. Our grown up kids are now adults and the decisions they make are on them. Yes, we made parenting mistakes. Every single parent in the world has made and will make parenting mistakes. It is part of the curse of Adam. We are all sinners. We sin against our kids. But every person hits an age where they have to decide what they are going to do about it. They have to make the decision that yes, they have hit adulthood with some handicaps. They have wounds, poor training, perhaps trauma that they now have to work through so that they can get on with their lives. But, they are the only ones who can get on with their lives. Their parents can ask their forgiveness, go to therapy with them, make penance, but in the end, it’s still them who have to do the hard work of overcoming and moving on. 

As parents, it’s hard to accept that. I feel shame and guilt for all the ways I messed up. I’ve thought long and hard about it, and I can give you a pretty concise list of all the things I wish I had done differently. I’ve been trying to make a point to express this to my grown up kids. Own my mistakes. I did this and this and I’m really sorry. Please forgive me. Some of those mistakes will have life-long effects on my kids. But, unfortunately, I am no longer in a position to get them the healing they need to recover from those wounds. They have to pursue that on their own. All I can do is keep loving them, keep being there, and pray like crazy. And be humble enough to accept the fact that God’s grace covers these sins too. 

I have two grown up kids right now. I think they are amazing. I am over-the-top proud of them. They’ve made their own choices and continue to do the hard work of just muddling through, trying to figure things out. Young adulthood is messy. There is no way I would want to go back and live that time of my life again. I am confident that God has his hand on their lives and I am proud to be their mom. 

But, I’d like to add, their progression through adulthood has not looked anything like I thought it would. And that’s not good or bad. It just is. Their story is just beginning, and I’m learning how to step down from Parent-in-Charge to the new role as Chief Cheerleader, Back-up Support, and Prayer Warrior.