Permission

There is something about having a 2-yr-old that changes a person. Perhaps it is their uncanny ability to fillet your heart down to your deepest and rawest emotions- and leave exposed and quivering, not only your very last nerve, but your fears, your hopes, your dreams. Your pour your love into them like water into their hands and sometimes they can hold onto it briefly and marvel at it's lovliness and other times they wail as it seems to slip through their fingers...and you never know which it will be.

I struggle a lot with mommy guilt, especially with Warrior and the last 2 years we have had.  The first year of her life her daddy was deployed overseas.  We were all under a lot of stress and I was not always a graceful parent.  The second year we were surprised to become pregnant again- with twins!  It was a very difficult pregnancy with me in and out of the hospital and ending with the babies arriving 6 weeks early and spending a month in the NICU.  She hardly had her mother at all and then when I did finally come home I brought two new babies with me. 

It has been pretty hectic here ever since and all that is hard for a 2-yr-old to take in.  Besides the fact that she is sooooo much like me in personality.  Wow.  Yea.  Key strong-willed child; that's both of us.  We are both intense.  Then there is the fact that she is 2 which in itself comes with so many challenges...and joys.  Whatever you do, don't forget the joys. 

That girl is so smart, funny, loving, nurturing, just plain beautiful.  If we read a book and someone falls or gets hurt in it, then we both have to hug the book and kiss their injuries.  She loves to go shopping so that she can holler at everyone we go by until they say hi back to her and she always zeros in on the elderly, lonely and miserable looking, anyone her little soul senses needs to be pursued and persuaded to smile at a little girl.  Someone once asked me if it bothered me if someone I don't know talks to my child (they were referencing an elderly couple in a restaurant).  My response was something to the fact that (if I am right there and it is safe- and trust me, I'm teaching her what is safe and ok and what is not then) how can I not let my child bless another? 

Sometimes I have to give her permission to be a blessing.  I have to give her permission to be 2.  I have to understand God has given her certain gifts and she has to learn how to use them and share them and sometimes she is overwhelmed with the desire to do so and I must know when not to quench that in her heart.  I have to understand she needs to explore and experiement and sometimes that will be a mess, an inconvenience, or a downright disaster.  I have to understand that she does not always understand or have the verbal skills to process and explain all her emotions- thus tantrums sometimes.  I have to understand she is LEARNING how the world works, how relationships work, how my ink pens work so she has to take them all apart and bend them and lose the springs.  I put them up above her reach, but somehow she has a bloodhound's scense and go go gadget arms for things she is not supposed to have.  Have I mentioned she also has superb problem solving skills?  That kid figured out how to push objects and climb on top of the kitchen counters before she was even walking.

When I do give her that permission to be- be a blessing, be 2, be a warrior poet....you can almost feel her spirit breathe a sigh of relief.  I take time to redirect her attention from things she isn't supposed to be getting into, to explain how things work, to give her a few choices, and let her do some things herself and I find at the end of the day she is full of snuggles and kisses, and content to melt into my arms and relax and go to sleep.  I find that I had more patience when I altered my expectations.  I did not smash that glimmer of hope and wonder in her eye into a hard and defiant anger with words and actions of hot frustration.

I also have to give myself permission...and grace.  I'm not perfect and I will fail at times, but that does not make me a failure of a mother.  I read where Lisa Welchel said, "If I were a perfect parent, then my children would have no need for God."  So.True. When I give myself permission to be ____ (you fill in the blank), that alters my expectations to something more realistic, which in turn lowers my frustration level and raises my breaking point so that I am not wailing when it seems like my desires are slipping through my fingers like water.  :-)