Not Finished Yet - I Am a Work In Progress - Be Patient With Me

Backpacks are filled with organized folders, lunch bags are full with lunch and snacks and the kids anxiously waiting to walk to school. If you are a parent whose child entered a new chapter this week, then you know the double feeling when your kids head back to school. For my family, this Tuesday was a first: my oldest son’s first day in high school and my twins first day of middle school.

When I dropped off my oldest son, I had to strengthen myself and hold it together. He was a little cute boy few years ago and now he is a tall good looking boy.

As a mom or dad, when your baby hold your hands and starts to walk, you wish they never let go of you, but they do. I remember the excitement when they made their first steps alone; since then they are striving to become more and more independent. It’s the natural development of a child and extremely hard on the parent to learn to let them go, to allow them to make choices and become successful adults.

When my oldest son started grade one, I freaked out. I couldn’t protect him anymore all the time; I couldn’t be there for him and with him always as I wished. As a parent you want to protect your children from every hardship, yet failure is part of growing and becoming better. Back then I realized that my kids will only stand by God’s grace. Today, I rest in peace that my kids are in the hands of God and nothing can snatch them from HIS hands. I don’t worry anymore; I pray and give my concerns to God and trust in Him, and Him alone.

Before they left for their first day of school, this year too I prayed this prayer.

If your home page is MSN, then yesterday more likely you came across this article. It was posted in their morning tab rocks. The interesting thing is I never thought about this before. It never occurred to me that when an asker and guesser meet, unpleasant reactions might occur. 

As a child and teenager I was an Asker. I am a very direct person, so if I have a question or if I would like a favor, I’ll just ask. Maybe it’s because growing up as a child I was the oldest child (I have a brother who is ten years younger then me) and I can recall being ten years old and my mom would send me to her physician to extend her medical leave documents. 

Now, you have to understand I grew up in Romania, under the communist regime. When women had babies they had to return to work after a three months leave.  The only way you could extend that sick leave period is to have a physician who would be willing to write a sick note to you. This worked like this way: you pay for the sick leave note and they extend your “sickness”. So at ten I was going to my mom’s physician with the money in one envelop to extend the sick leave. Why on earth would a mom send her daughter to do all this? This was all corruption. In the communist regime everything was related to corruption. Why would a parent teach your kids at age ten how to engage in corruption? Don’t ask. It was so “normal” to send me everywhere. 

Later in life as an outspoken teen, whenever I didn’t agreed with the “system” I would verbalize it. Some of my teachers were really concerned that one day I might just disappear. (That’s how the communist system worked: if you spoke anything against the system, you just disappeared, had an instant accident etc. – you either with us or we will kill you.)  In 1989 when the communist regime was turned over (I could write an entire book about that – I was there and only God kept me alive) one of my teachers told me I would of never finish high school with my open mouth and rejection of injustice.