Family, Mother and the Branch

I read this quote today - after a particularly intense conversations with both of my daughters -
Family quarrels have a total bitterness unmatched by others.  Yet it sometimes happens that they also have a kind of tang, a pleasantness beneath the unpleasantness, based on the tacit understanding that this is not for keeps; that any limb you climb out on will still be there later for you to climb back.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

I guess that is the thing that plagues me the most through the last five years....I love my daughters - more than anything in this world...and deep down they know it. We argue - believe me there have been some doozies over some poor choices in their lives - but they are mine. God gave them to me and my exhusband to raise. The guilt I sometimes feel - did I do things wrong - is that why they are leading these lives? Was I too permissive - did I not pray enough - did I etc.... But I also know that there is no perfect parent - other than my Heavenly father.

I know that I have made my share of mistakes - but I also know deep down that I did the best job I could in a world that glorifies things that I can't condone. My oldest daughter is a joy - we have had our ups and downs - but she appears to be stable and happy. She leads worship at her church...she has made a life for her and her husband. And although it pains me to have her so far away from me...I don't worry about her so much!

My other two are still young - maybe they are just "Sowing their wild oats" as the old saying goes. Proverbs 22:6 says, "Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it." My continuous prayer is that the lessons their father, me, their step-mother and step-father all taught them will resound in their heads and that God will touch their hearts and souls and they will turn around back to the ways they should be going!

Here is the last family picture taken when we celebrated my 40th birthday - just a little over a year ago. As the quote above says - the limb is still there for them to climb back on!!!

They tell me to let them go - and I do to a point - but a quote from one of my favorite books explains how most mothers feel - Grown don't mean nothing to a mother.  A child is a child.  They get bigger, older, but grown?  What's that suppose to mean?  In my heart it don't mean a thing.  ~Toni Morrison, Beloved, 1987

Just as my Heavenly father has forgiven me - I forgive you.  I am here for you - you just have to climb back on the branch