Children: Gifts not Property

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“Children are a gift from the Lord; they are a reward from him.” Psalm 127:3

On Wednesday of this week my daughter, the one whose children I’m raising, celebrated her birthday. I did not reach out to her. I wondered if she’d try to contact me. She didn’t, but did message my granddaughter later that night.

The last time I heard from my daughter was Mother’s Day. She hadn’t known it was Mother’s Day until someone mentioned it. She was an hour away and didn’t know when she’d get back that day but wanted to see the kids. I tried to figure out how to work with her, but she got angry when I asked questions about her schedule instead of automatically saying yes.

I tried to reach her a few days before Mother’s Day to arrange something. I messaged the last two phone numbers I’d had for her, but it turns out she no longer has those numbers. That happens a lot with addicts.

Long story short, she got angry because I was trying to figure out when she’d be back in town and actually suggested meeting in a day or two because she couldn’t give me an answer.

When she gets angry, she rants at you. It’s ugly. I tried a few times to talk with her but ended up hanging up on her. It was my Mother’s Day, too, after all.

Her response? She called my granddaughter. I could hear her crying and yelling over the speaker of V’s phone even though she was in her room with the door shut. V gave simple responses, two or three words at most. I wanted to tell her to hang up on her mother, but I didn’t know if I should or not. How was she taking her mother’s attack on me? Did she want to see her mom? Did she agree with her? Would my interference push her in that direction? Luckily, her brother was outside and missed the histrionics.

Turns out V didn’t feel much compassion for her mom. That’s sad. My heart breaks for my grandchildren. I grew up with two loving parents. They were amazing. My grandchildren have us.

Before you comment on how lucky or blessed they are to have us, please don’t. That’s one of my least favorite comments from friends who mean well. They aren’t lucky. They don’t live with their parents. To them, it feels like their mom chose drugs over them. Even during the periods when she’s clean and working (there have been a few), she still doesn’t stick to it long enough to regain custody. Deep inside, they probably wonder if she loves them.

I wonder that, too. I think she’s unable. It’s common for addicts to lose the ability to love or feel empathy or compassion. Drugs change your brain. Everything becomes a means to an end. She claims she loves them, but her actions, when she is around them, come across as territorial. They are hers. Her children. Not mine. She doesn’t understand the blessings and responsibilities that come with parenting. Children aren’t possessions. They are souls we’ve been asked to love and nurture.

My husband and I do what we can. It’s not easy. Children of addicts often have ADHD, and these two are no different. There are other aspects of their neuro wiring that make raising them a challenge.

Although it’s a challenge, I don’t dream of the day my daughter will straighten up and do the right thing. I, actually, worry that she’ll do just enough to convince a judge she’s capable of raising her children. She’s not, and she never will be.

Don’t get me wrong. I believe she’s capable of getting help and straightening up her life if she chooses to do so. I have said many prayers for that, but I don’t try to pray for specifics with her anymore. I don’t reach out to her anymore. I hand her over to God.

Do I miss her? No. Except for days like Wednesday when you can’t help but recall the day your child came into the world.

Recently, a sister from my church said it best: “I don’t suppose you have maternal feelings toward her anymore.”

YES! That’s exactly how I feel.

Many of you are probably struggling with that idea and can’t fathom not having parental feelings toward your children. In fact, another friend overhearing this conversation rejected my response. She insisted I had maternal feelings toward my daughter. She can’t relate and rather than recognize my relief that someone understood, she told me I was wrong. Her path with her children didn’t hit this wall, so she doesn’t know.

As the verse at the beginning of this post says, children are a gift. But children become adults who must make their own decisions. As parents, we raise them to make the right ones, but, and this is the hard part, we have no control over what they choose to do once given their freedom. I would have steered my daughter clear of that wall if I controlled her life. I don’t have that control. Neither does God. We have choice, free will. Not every person chooses the right path.

If you can’t relate to my lack of maternal feelings, be glad, but be aware many parents do know exactly what I mean. It doesn’t hurt, except a little on her birthday. It just is.

Silence For a Purpose: Why I Haven’t Posted

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I’ve been silent for awhile. Many reasons contributed to my absence on this blog.

For one thing, I really didn’t have the time. A lot was going on professionally. Personally, the situation with the grandchildren’s mother was going well, so I decided to not say anything for a while. Why? It appeared she might be making headway in straightening out her life. We’ve been there with her before, though, so rather than write about it, I waited for signs of true stability.

To be honest, I don’t know what to think right now. Thank goodness I can trust in Him when things get fuzzy.

Trust in him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge. Psalms 62:8

For the first time in five years, our daughter joined us for Thanksgiving and Christmas, but the experiences were not what any of us, the children especially, hoped for. She’s working long hours, so we planned our gathering to give her time to rest before coming over. On Thanksgiving, she seemed excited to see the kids but struggled to stay awake. She was supposed to get off work that morning at 7 am, but several employees failed to show up, so she ended up working until 1 pm. She didn’t dare try to go to sleep when she knew I was going to pick her up at 4.

At Christmas, she had off from 10 am on Christmas Eve until 7 pm on December 26. This relieved me because I didn’t want a repeat performance of what we saw at Thanksgiving. We even broke our cardinal rule and invited her to spend the night at our house on Christmas Eve, so she could see the children when they saw what Santa Claus brought in the morning. Also, I didn’t want to stop in the middle of our Christmas morning to drive across town to get her.

She turned me down.

That gave me pause. What mother doesn’t want to be with her kids when they get up on Christmas morning?

She assured me she’d find a way to our house. She did but showed up four hours after she texted to say she was on the way. She finally arrived driving a clunker of a car and told me she’d bought it. As of this posting, that car is out of commission. During the entire time she was here, she kept falling asleep. It was far worse than Thanksgiving, much more than sleep deprivation.

Everyone, including our granddaughter, suspected she was back on drugs.

A little over a week ago, she needed a ride to work, so I brought up my concerns about her using again. She became furious and blamed the long hours she works combined with her continued, but undiagnosed, health problems. I know something is going on with her health, because she lists our address when she goes to the hospital. The volume of mail we’ve seen supports this fact.

Maybe she’s struggling to stay awake because of her health issues, but what she tells me about it doesn’t make sense. When I told her everyone assumed she was back on drugs, she had the audacity to ask me why we would think that. As many times as she’s gone back to using, she still can’t understand why our suspicions turned in that direction.

I know we’re promised a changed life if we believe and stake our life on that belief:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come:
The old has gone, the new is here! 2 Cor. 5:17

But, I haven’t seen enough change in her to fully go there, yet.

If she’s back on drugs, I’m angry at her. She’s managed to put a tiny question of doubt in my mind about potential health issues. It doesn’t take much research, though, to know her explanations don’t fit. I only know what she’s telling me, and the dots do not connect.

All I can do is lift her up in prayer. It’s no small thing, but some days it feels like a tiny drop in the ocean of her messy life.

On the personal/professional front, I did achieve a lifelong goal this past year, and for that I’m truly thankful.

After years of pursuing publication of my novel, I signed with a publisher and my first book, The Watchers of Moniah, came out on December 18. I haven’t said much about it here because it’s an epic fantasy trilogy–not exactly related to the topics on this blog.

If you’re open to reading fun and clean genre fiction, the second book comes out January 25, and the last one on March 1. (It helps to have two books already written when you get the publishing contract.) I talk a lot more about my writing journey on my writing website if you want to check it out.

Another Year Without Their Mother

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I’ve tried twice to write a post today; one that expresses my feelings and what’s happening in our lives right now. The two posts I started to write morphed into something else. One of them has potential, but I saved it for some other time. The other one was whiny. I feared people might misunderstand my message, so I deleted it. So, here I go again. Maybe there’ll be some message worth sharing in this one.

We spent crazy, busy, hectic days with various parts of our family over the Christmas break. We made the trip to Charleston to celebrate our youngest granddaughter’s first birthday. We cooked, we gifted, we overindulged, and we got very little rest. That’s probably why I’m not on my game today. The first week back on a normal schedule has been tough.

The grands are showing a bit of wear and tear, too. It’s hard to come down from the highs of the holidays and return to the routine. I’m glad for the return to schedules, but I’m struggling to get moving. For the grands, there’s the added grief of not spending Christmas with their mother. We know where she is—jail again—but we don’t dare form any expectations as she awaits her latest hearing.

The grands have spoken to her several times, and she made some promises that upset my granddaughter. She wants to believe her mother, but she’s finding that hard to do. Her brother falls for the promises. He doesn’t really remember life with their mom, so he clings to an ideal that he thinks he remembers.

I hope and pray she doesn’t break their hearts this time. Every time she’s incarcerated and removed from the elements of addiction and the people who she associates with in that life, she cleans up (not by choice though she seems glad to do it) and makes plans to get better and restore her family. I really want her to do that, but I find it hard to believe that she will. Her daughter has come to the same conclusion. Her son? He’s planning for the day when they’re a happy family again.

Neither of them mentioned buying her a Christmas gift this year. When I suggested we visit her, they didn’t jump at the chance.

Yet, one of the points Victoria reminded me of this Christmas was that there were good times with their mom. They did laugh and have fun. It wasn’t always bad. She sometimes even has good things to say about Amari’s father. She misses those times. She yearns for that life. And I can’t fix that. How she expresses this, at her age, is often through yelling and disrespectful behavior. We’ve struggled to find a way to help her change her attitude when speaking to us, but it’s not working. When I stop and think about it, I know there’s more going on inside her than she can tell us. But what can we do? If we let her verbally berate us, we allow her to develop poor social habits. If we punish every occurrence, she’ll never experience any joys in life. She’s in counseling, but as the counselor has told us, it’s not a quick fix. There’s work to be done.

But what heartbreak to start the new year without your mother…again. This is their 5th Christmas and New Year without her.

I don’t let myself dwell on these dismal points often. Probably why I had two false starts to my post today. It’s enough to make you want to give up. I’m not a giving-up kind of person, so I move forward. Which reminds me of a statement I heard in a recent audiobook, The Wisdom of Wolves, Lesson from the Sawtooth Pack by Jim Dutcher and Jamie Dutcher. Jamie is talking about grief and mourning in regards to humans versus wolves and makes this clarification (paraphrased):

Either you move on or you move forward. Moving on means you choose to shove the grief behind you. Moving forward means you embrace the grief and let it be part of who you are but not all of who you are. You allow the grief but don’t let it control you. 

I’m probably not saying it perfectly, but the wisdom of these words strike to the heart of what the grands must be dealing with. I believe I’m in the moving forward approach in relation to my daughter’s choices. I’m not sure where they are. I hope they’re moving forward, but I have a feeling they may be trying to move on because that’s what the world tells them to do. (Wolves are much better at moving forward than humans.)

Victoria confided in me recently that she’s gotten mad at friends who tug at her clothes or mess with something of hers. She told me they don’t understand that at several points in her life, she lost everything she had because they got evicted from their homes and her belongings disappeared. She treasures what she has now, and she hates when they disrespect it.  I’ve said it before, but the last time this happened was when they came to live with us. She’d lost everything but a few small bags of things. She knows she’s never getting any of that back. Her friends don’t get it. They tell her that her grandparents can buy her a new one. This brief glimpse into her feelings, a rare occurrence, reminds me how hard it is for them.

Sometimes I forget. Sometimes I can’t relate. Somehow I must find a way to relate and not forget. I just don’t know how.

NOTE:  I highly recommend The Wisdom of Wolves by the Dutchers. It’s an entertaining and enlightening read into the true nature of wolves, who by the way, move forward instead of moving on.