Strength through Pain

For Mother’s Day Jaelyn made me a book in school, “The Important Book About My Mom.”   It was sweet and humorous at the same time.  It is always interesting to see how your children see you as a parent.  Jaelyn’s six words for me were:  kind, loving, fancy, happy, helpful, and cuddly.  Her explanations were:  “My mom is kind because she combs my hair.  My mom is loving because she helps animals a lot.  My mom is fancy because she was made that way.  My mom is happy because she has a family that loves her.  My mom is helpful because she helps me with my math.  My mom is cuddly because she cuddles with me.”   Not sure that I would have ever described myself as fancy or helping animals a lot, but in the eyes of an eight year old, those are words that describe me.

After Mother’s Day when we were driving one evening, Jaelyn was talking about doing a Father’s Day card before the end of school like they did other years.  She just mentioned it in passing, not really saying more than that they would be making one.  I talked with my mom about it later, about how hard this was going to be for Jaelyn.  We both agreed that it would probably be good for her to do it for her daddy, not “substitute” someone else for that honor.  I remember mentioning to my mom that in the way she talked about it, I didn’t think she had really thought about what that would mean for her.

Last evening on the drive home from my parent’s house, Jaelyn brought the topic up again.  She said, “Mommy, when we do the father’s day card in school, I don’t know what I’m going to do.”  I told her that I thought she should still do the card for daddy and write it in what she loved most about him.  I reassured her that her Daddy loved her very much and he knew that she loved him and he would have loved getting a Father’s Day card from her.

It breaks my heart again every time we have a conversation about changes for her because her daddy is gone.  Those are the times when I get angry.  I get angry more for Jaelyn’s loss than mine – I think because I am an adult and I think it is easier for an adult to “handle” all of this than a child. As a mother, I just want to protect her from pain and difficulty, even though I know that I can’t protect her from everything and that it isn’t healthy to protect her from everything.  Otherwise she won’t have the strength to weather storms when she is an adult if she doesn’t learn it throughout her life.  It is the same as when she is sick – I would rather be sick than her.  It is such a helpless feeling, seeing her sick or in pain from grief, and knowing that there is nothing I can do to make it better.  That is when I have no choice but to trust that God will take care of her grieving heart and surround her with the people who will care for her and help her.