Each year at this time, I write a letter to my son—a Birthday letter—that he won’t receive until he’s 18. I write about things that happened throughout the year, things I witnessed in him, memorable things, the way that I feel about him. And I send these letters to his grandma, who puts them in a special box that he’ll get when he turns of age. My hope is that these yearly gifts will give him some sense, someday, of how much he’s been loved, always. Of course, I can never write without crying my eyes out!
This year Nathaniel hits double digits… 10 years old. A birthday I remember well myself, having the feeling that I was not a little kid anymore. Really just a hop, skip and jump until I was a teenager! And it just flies, right?
And here’s my son… this beautiful child that chose me as his Mama, chose this path, this family, this life. And it is such an incredible blessing to witness his journey into all that he is becoming.
I consistently see kids who seem to be “holding” a lot these days. It feels like kids have, in some ways, more emotional stressors impacting them on a daily basis, along with less internal resources to manage them. It’s not as if kids are given more responsibility or more difficult tasks than they used to be given—less, in most cases! But it seems as if the burden of adult emotions are falling onto our kids’ shoulders. And that’s a heavy burden. And I see this in my son.
Try as I might, I know that my kids see the pain of… well, life, in my eyes and in my behavior. As skilled or resourced as I think I might be, they witness the pain of failed relationship, the ups and downs of balancing family and work, the feelings that I sometimes have that LIFE IS REALLY HARD SOMETIMES. And honestly, he’s just seen some pretty crummy adult behavior that’s taught him we’re not always completely trustworthy. And that fact breaks my heart. While it may be a natural part of growing up, I think most parents would agree that these days, it seems that that process is on fast-forward.
Our kids act out sometimes. And they can push us to our edge, for certain! And when we can sit, and look beneath their behavior, to the underlying need—when we see that they are simply wanting, desperately, to be loved, we give them the gift of knowing their worth. We give them the gift of trusting WHO THEY ARE.
So I sit, on this last day of my son being “a little kid,” and I want to simply cherish him. And I want for him to enter this new phase of “big kid-ness,” knowing that he’s being held in unconditional, unrelenting, forever LOVE. I want him to know that he is PERFECT, just as he is—with every emotion and thought and natural quality that he embodies. And he could not be more loved by a mother.
For the Love of Your Life!
Angie