Meditations

I felt the prompting to clarify some things about my prayer life. Interesting enough, I wrote the thoughts on prayer(yesterday's blog) when I was at an all time low in my life. I am not sure if I am emotionally ready to write about this but maybe someone needs to read it to help them through a hard time.
I guess you could say that I am a person who likes to control things. I like to be in control of the outcome. If I am in a group or organization and I sense that no one is taking charge, I will step up to the plate and take over. When I became a mom, I immediately quit my teaching job and stayed home to "do it right." I was positive that no one else could raise my children better than me and I guess I still feel that way.
As time went on, I returned to teaching thinking that I could check that off my checklist. I had a checklist of items that a mom had to do to insure that her children turned out okay. My husband and I get up early every morning and read the Bible together and pray together. We have taught Sunday School together for 30 years...singles, then 12th grade youth and now college. We try to really lived out our faith for our sons to see.
I was completely unprepared for the failure I felt as a parent when our younger son was caught using drugs and put in an alternative school for 6 weeks. My husband and I felt such shame because we both teach school and everyone in town knew about our "failure" as parents. It did not get any better. In fact, it became much worse. Our son became more rebellious as time went on. I can still remember the profound grief that Mark and I felt that we had failed as parents. We were losing the precious son that we had raised. Our endless prayers seemed to fail on deaf ears.Some nights we did not know where he was and we were filled with fear. God, where are you?
I found myself thinking so often, what had we done wrong? Where had we failed? What did I leave out? What item on the checklist went unchecked? I had no idea that it would become even worse. Our son fell into a deep depression from which there seemed to be no escape. He did not want to live. He finally attempted suicide and was in intensive care for three days before we knew that he would make it. Ironically, he attempted to take his life at the end of a Bible study that we held in our home for his 11th grade class at church. Again, I weakly cried out to God, asking Him when he would answer me. The next few years were filled with sadness, bewilderment, shame, insecurity. Why did Mark and I have no control over how our son would turn out? He had no hope. I resigned myself to the fact that he would not marry, much less hold a job or move out of our home.I know what you are thinking...you were too busy doing the right things and had no time for your kids or you were a control freak and your son rebelled. I read every book or article I could get my hands on to find out how to change. We went to counseling. I had a young mom ask me do I regret going back to work when I did and do I think that if she stayed home from work that her son would not turn out like my son. See, that is what we do. We all try to control the outcome. We try to come up with a reason why we see a child turning out like he does. We are certain that if we can come up with a logical explanation and try not to do that ourselves that we are "safe" and that it won't happen to our children.
I wrote the thoughts on prayer(yesterday's blog) during this difficult time. I had no answers...just faith in the one who had all the answers.