My Heart is hurting...

My heart is so heavy today.



Being a mommy to depressed teens is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. Because my daughters' stories are not mine to tell, all I can say is that I pray for them all the time. I worry about Cheyanne's inability to find a place where she fits in this world. I am frightened she will just give up trying.
I am frightened for my younger daughter, too. A difficult few months and dysfunctional friendships have hardened her. She has a protective shell of anger around her, and relationships and even close friendships are so hard for her. I’m afraid that she will never let anyone including me ever love her. She already keeps her distance from me.
There have been many times when I’ve looked for God’s hand in my life, and many more times I’ve seen it. When I’m in the middle of trouble, and there’s no way to know what will happen next, it is so hard to believe that even now, in hard times, He can make something beautiful from these ashes. And yet, up till now, the ashes have never been the scars of my daughters. That hurts the most. These are my babies who are hurting.
When they were younger, someone was always reminding me that as a single mom, God never gives me more than I can handle. So I would talk it over with God and reiterate that, in case he somehow had misjudged my strength, I just wanted to remind him that I could not survive losing one of my children. I still don’t have that strength. I don’t know how to do more than I’m doing now. I don’t know how to make things better, and though I know that’s not really my job, I still can’t help the overwhelming desire to heal them, help, or fix them.
My friends give me encouraging verses, and remind me that I’ve trained up my girls in the way they should go, and when they get older they will return to it. But I know of people who have slipped away and fell further and further into depression, pain, bad choices, and death. No matter what I do, and how glorious is God’s plan, much depends on the free will of my children. I don’t know how to be OK with that.
My friend *Michelle has been one of the greatest spiritual influences of my life. After she had gone through an enormously difficult time, I asked her how she coped. Her reply was amazing. She told me what she wished she would have done to cope. “I wished I would have praised God more. I wished I would have listened to more Christian music and spent more time in prayer. I needed those things in my life.”
There has to be something to praise God about today.
I’ll praise him for the plan is putting into place, the plan that someday I’ll be able to see and rejoice. I’ll be thankful for the ways that he is going to rescue my family, when I’ve gone way beyond the abilities of my own strength.