We've been watching "13 Reasons Why", along with the rest of the world, and it's got me to thinking a lot.
First of all, watching a show like that 2 years ago would have been no big deal for me, but now, as a mother, it's so hard to watch. I cry my eyes out in every episode. Because I now can empathize so much more with the pain a mother goes through in losing a child.
Second, it's got me thinking about Ever. Right now we are her favorite people in the world. She runs to us for comfort, security, love, survival, when she's hurt, when she's scared, when she's tired, when she's hungry. Everything. We are her people.
And I know it won't always be that way. If not in her teenage years, when she's older and married with children of her own, she won't need us the way she needs us now. And that's really hard for me to understand and accept. I want her to always be my little sidekick and tiny bff, I want her to always want me and need me as much as I need her.
Parenting and motherhood are the most beautiful God-given job on this earth, but it also really sucks. We're given these precious lives to nurture and take care of, but only for a short time, until they develop their own dreams and desires and opinions and leave us high and dry for the next best thing.
It's the most fulfilling, yet heartbreaking job. Knowing that I cannot hold her safe in my arms forever. Knowing that I can't keep her to myself forever. Knowing that I will eventually have to let go.
But I'm already letting go, aren't I? Every day I let go. Because no matter how much I want to control everything, it's ultimately in God's hands.
The Lord gives us our children as a gift. He places them in our hands to care for on this earth. But, they're still His. We must hold them with open hands because they're not truly ours, and the tighter we try to hold the more it hurts. Their lives are in the hands of someone who loves them even more than us.
