I LOVE Thursdays!!

I have just returned home from my favourite night of the week...Thursday!! 
Some of you will know why right away, some will have good ideas about why and others will have no clue...whatever category you fit in, the fact remains that this day has become the highlight of my week.

On Thursdays, I start to clear my desk at 3:00 to so that I can leave work early...by 4:30 I am at the fence of the daycare where one of my greatest joys comes running to say hello and get a kiss through the chain link fence (yes this requires a bit of strategic puckering to ensure I am only kissing little lips and not the fence itself), then it is inside for a full blown hug from him...and a number of other cute faces that yell "Hello Austin's grandma, can I have a hug too?"... Once all the hugs are properly distributed, the muddie buddies are folded and put away, the crafts collected and the daily menu board read (it is somehow important that I know what he ate for lunch) off we go . His little hand grabs mine and the jabbering starts as we head off to spend some quality time together. This ritual brings me so much joy that I actually am 'tearing' up a bit as I recount it for all of you. Our dates can include a number of things depending on our mood...a game, shopping for dinner, a trip on the sky train just because he loves it or perhaps a coffee & hot chocolate at Chapters... but it always ends with sharing a meal with mommy, another hug , kiss (or two) & an 'I ♥ you' before I leave. These are moments that I treasure.

This kind of unconditional love is good for the soul, 
it is a gift that I am grateful for...
yup, this is the stuff memories are made of!

A Revelation...

This is a time of personal revelation for me...God walking me through my childhood, helping me to heal, showing me what to do, helping distinguish truth from lies...it is often crippling as I do not want to relive the past, sometimes it actually takes my breath away. I have prayed that God would allow me to see those things that need to be faced & fixed... but to also allow me to see how He sees me, small glimpses of myself through His eyes...

I am constantly amazed at the passage of time. Was it not only last week that my babies were running around giggling, that I curled up at the end of each day with a bedtime story??...no, no it was not. In fact, this coming week my littlest man will turn 5 years old--I have been a grandma for 5 years!!  I have treasured every single moment of loving him...but there is no denying that I am getting older, that the end of each day comes quicker than it once did!! I sometimes find it hard to grasp, my babies are all adults...I will never be the mother of young children again...it is a bittersweet pill.

Yesterday while having dinner with a couple of wonderful friends, our kids came up....you moms know how this is. We all have older children, and they have all given us a run for our money at some point.  As we talked, laughed and shared it hit me....I LOVE MY KIDS!! OK, I knew this before yesterday, anyone who knows me knows that I love my kids. What made this moment of realization so amazing was what happened later..

As a mom who spent the last 16 years raising her kids alone, it has become easy to blame myself for all the little things that I did wrong~

why did I yell like that? how could I say something so stupid? why isn't the house clean? did I forget to take something out for dinner? how much damage have I done because of my parenting? was "this" my fault?did I spend enough time with them?

I could go on as I have been plagued with many such thoughts over the years, the way I opted to parent was an odd mix and I often wondered if I made the right choices (and there was no one to blame but me so it weighed on me). 

Then God gave me a glimpse....a sliver of what He thought of me....and it was good! As I reflected on the passage of time He showed me how special it was to have these children love me despite my mistakes, that love covered many failures, that the way I loved them, warts and all was the way He loves me...God, in His loving way gave me a revelation!

OOPS!!

Today I have some time to myself so it seemed only right to catch up on some blogs and write a new one....imagine my surprise when I saw the date of the last one was Nov...I know I had written a couple of posts after that...I had and there they were sitting in the drafts. Who takes the time to blog and does not hit 'post'?? Apparently I do!!

As I read them I see why, they were painful and raw, guess I thought I would clean them up a bit before the 'I am forever in cyberspace' moment...reading them in the original form has been God's gift to me today as He shows me the journey of healing is indeed here. One of the posts started like this:

The year 2011 has come with many ups & downs...with wonderful moments and sad moments, with both firsts and lasts. As I prepare for Christmas Eve I feel the extreme loss of my best friend, the sadness of my nephews passing much too young and hurt over the number of youth who have tragically left families & friends alone to mourn...the heaviness of it weighs on me.

I was aware that last Christmas would be the last one we shared with Della, lovingly known as Grandma B but I was not prepared for emptiness I would feel as I spent the first one without her in 36 years...she was a treasure and I miss her today, I miss her smile and her prayers and her love.

Today it is 2012 and somehow the world seems brighter, the sadness is still there but the hope is far stronger. Yes, I miss the people who are gone...but I would not had I not been blessed with them to begin with and for that I am grateful!!

This past year I have discovered some wonderful things, I have been blessed with 'truth'...the truth of who I am and who God sees me to be. The years have brought many lies and recently I had somehow lost my confidence, my resolve to cope. The problem was that I started to believe the lies which started a spiral of emotions I was not prepared for and did not want to deal with...it was easier to shut down and simply exist, making it through each day. That was a hard realization for me as I am not a quitter, fortunately the past couple of months have shown me a number of things. I did not quit, I was broken and too tired to continue the constant battle. I needed rest, both physically and spiritually. God has been ever faithful and granted me both of these needs. 

Over Christmas I took some time off, with a hundred plans I was ready to go...instead I spent a week at home doing NOTHING!! I slept, I read, I prayed and slept some more, for a moment or two I berated myself for being lazy...God confirmed I simply needed rest, so I rested...and as I rested was able to see the lies more clearly. The danger of a lie is the half truth that hides behind it. I am not sure how to concisely convey this realization in a blog post but as I wrote down the many lies that God was gracious enough to uncover I saw the little truths..

~you are fat & ugly--yes, I am overweight 

~you are lazy--yes, sometimes I have to stop what I am doing and rest

~you are unlovable--yes, some people do not love me, MANY do!

These of course are the big ones, there are many more subtle ones, the problem is when we mix the large lie with a bit of truth, it then becomes just 'authentic' enough for us to buy into it...and satan has another small victory. I will no longer allow the lies to overshadow the truth!!

I digress...not sure how I got here from oops **shrug** I guess it is important so I will hit 'publish' and look forward to 2012 being my year of truth ♥