I’m feeling very tempted to go back and delete a bunch of these posts that I’ve written over the past several weeks. There was a while where I did not do any form of journaling and I’d be curious now to see the kinds of things I would have written. Some posts from the earlier days of blogging I have deleted. I couldn’t imagine my kids reading them and understanding.

This was prompted by a reel I saw on Instagram this evening. It was a woman saying how much she loved being a boy mom, but then realizing that meant she would have to be somebody’s mother-in-law someday. The gist was that she didn’t like that idea. The people in the comments were not approving. On other reels she had they were telling her to go to therapy, saying she herself was a giant red flag, and accusing her of emotional incest. It made me self-conscious.

Some of this pain that I’ve been going through with my son has made me wonder if this isn’t just some kind of screwed up dysfunction. It doesn’t really matter. Whatever it is, God is fixing it, purging me, whatever it is he does that hurts. I said it already, but I’ve not felt this kind of deep mothering work since the days when I was realizing I was actually selfish and not just a saint.

It’s like this entitlement I didn’t realize was there. For however many years now, these people are the ones I have chosen to spend my life with more than anyone else in the world. They have been my favorite people, the people I have wanted to be with. I want to be friends with them, and sometimes it hurts that they’d rather be friends with other people right now instead of being friends with me. I’m just going to say it. I’m just going to own that I still am learning what love is.

Because I wouldn’t actually want or think it was good for my kids to want to be with me all the time, or even three-fourths of the time, or even half of the time anymore at this point. I feel owed for what I have done for them, and I don’t want to feel that way. I loved them because I loved them and for no other reason. God built the commandment to honor our parents into the creation.

So I know my feelings aren’t completely out there. But I also know that the love of God involves more than simply keeping the commandments. We of all people know we cannot keep them perfectly, and neither will my kids be able to this for me. And they have not even wronged me right now as I write this, they just spent the day at camp again, and one wanted to spent the night there too. I’ve been waiting all summer for him to come home. I love you, son, wherever you are.