There are times when you step back and take a look at yourself and your life and see the station you are in and go, "Now, that's something. I really didn't see myself being here five years ago. I thought that I was going to Peru. Hmmm. How'd that happen? Must've been following a different map than I thought". :) I see how my life has drastically changed and how it will never, ever be the same. It will never 'snap back' like a rubber band. It has forever changed, for I have walked through a dimensional doorway to a different life: the life of being a Father. It's really a Wholly Different Life and nothing will be the same ever again. Life has taken on a new pitch, as it were. Good for me, I was bored with the way life was. Well...I don't EVER have to worry my little head about being bored ever again, except maybe thirty years hence, should Spirit see fit that I'm still walking the Earth at that time.
I was speaking with a good friend the other day and I was asking him whether a certain 'stage' that my daughter (who is 35mos. old) is going through would ever end. I asked, "Tell me it gets better, doesn't it"? He kind of laughed. He's got a daughter who's eleven now, I think. So I figure he knows a little, right (and what I'm dealing with is still probably relatively fresh in his memory since his daughter is only eleven or so)? He, half laughing, then sobering up after halfway clearing his throat says in a very composed manner, "It's not so much that it gets better. You just get used to the flow of it. The 'stages' and the different challenges change, but more than anything you change; you get accustomed to the flow of it".
You know, I have to say here that all parents that I have talked to pretty much sing the same tune. Nobody has said, "it gets easier" although that's really what I had hoped to hear, but every body says with big smiles on their faces, "and yeah, isn't it Great"!? I reply, "yes, particularly when she's asleep". haha...hehehe...hahaha..(smile)...(deep sigh). Those parents of you out there know that of which I speak. It's Great,..and Hard, and Hard and Great the sum of which is a Beauty that turns on the tears it is so Indescribable. I have never been so touched in all my life and here on out is, in all likelyhood a broadening and a deepening of that Intial Touch of the Divine. Hopefully, I'll still think of it as Divine thirty years from now. On the surface, I'll probably go back and forth on that a little from time to time.....just to keep my sanity, you understand.
So in the process of the children changing as they pass through their 'stages' of development, we as parents change permanently and deeply through being their Caretakers in this Journey of Human Growth. Raising a child (or certainly children) is a fresh and alive world where excitement and surprise are served up fresh daily!
I now have a great sense of compassion for parents now that I am one. What I used to judge as disheveled or disorganized or hectic, now in light of firsthand experience, was nothing more than adults raising children. Yes, it will be messy. These are little people discovering their world and what it means to be here, so of course they're going to 'color outside the lines'. That's their job! A child's behavior is not as easily 'guided' as you may think. I've come to respect
the Art of Parenting, for that's what it is....an Art. I remember that I used to think, "Why will those people not 'control' their child?" or, "I wish those parents would make their kid stop crying"! On and on it would go in my
head. The plain and simple truth is that it's just Not that simple. Now, I know and I'm so happy that I do.
I was speaking with a good friend the other day and I was asking him whether a certain 'stage' that my daughter (who is 35mos. old) is going through would ever end. I asked, "Tell me it gets better, doesn't it"? He kind of laughed. He's got a daughter who's eleven now, I think. So I figure he knows a little, right (and what I'm dealing with is still probably relatively fresh in his memory since his daughter is only eleven or so)? He, half laughing, then sobering up after halfway clearing his throat says in a very composed manner, "It's not so much that it gets better. You just get used to the flow of it. The 'stages' and the different challenges change, but more than anything you change; you get accustomed to the flow of it".
You know, I have to say here that all parents that I have talked to pretty much sing the same tune. Nobody has said, "it gets easier" although that's really what I had hoped to hear, but every body says with big smiles on their faces, "and yeah, isn't it Great"!? I reply, "yes, particularly when she's asleep". haha...hehehe...hahaha..(smile)...(deep sigh). Those parents of you out there know that of which I speak. It's Great,..and Hard, and Hard and Great the sum of which is a Beauty that turns on the tears it is so Indescribable. I have never been so touched in all my life and here on out is, in all likelyhood a broadening and a deepening of that Intial Touch of the Divine. Hopefully, I'll still think of it as Divine thirty years from now. On the surface, I'll probably go back and forth on that a little from time to time.....just to keep my sanity, you understand.
So in the process of the children changing as they pass through their 'stages' of development, we as parents change permanently and deeply through being their Caretakers in this Journey of Human Growth. Raising a child (or certainly children) is a fresh and alive world where excitement and surprise are served up fresh daily!
I now have a great sense of compassion for parents now that I am one. What I used to judge as disheveled or disorganized or hectic, now in light of firsthand experience, was nothing more than adults raising children. Yes, it will be messy. These are little people discovering their world and what it means to be here, so of course they're going to 'color outside the lines'. That's their job! A child's behavior is not as easily 'guided' as you may think. I've come to respect
the Art of Parenting, for that's what it is....an Art. I remember that I used to think, "Why will those people not 'control' their child?" or, "I wish those parents would make their kid stop crying"! On and on it would go in my
head. The plain and simple truth is that it's just Not that simple. Now, I know and I'm so happy that I do.