Let it RAIN

Five Minute Friday prompt this week is RAIN. I had to ponder it all day and here it is the VERY end of the day and I'm finally typing out my musings.

The song, Let It Rain, by Michael W Smith, came out in a traumatic season in my life. It's super repetitive and one my now Heaven residing Grandfather would call a 24/7 song. You sing the same song with seven lines twenty four times. He was funny that way. He preferred the hymns with the sacred words that matched his journey.

RAIN is refreshing to me. I don't find it gloomy, I find it washes away the yuck. That's why the song resonated with me so much. I needed a downpour of RAIN to was away my pain.

I've also prayed the same kind of prayer over my kids their whole lives:

God, please wash away the residue of the day. Refresh, restore and renew them, body, mind and spirit, in Jesus name amen.

I know we all get the residue of the day stuck to us. I know the True RAIN washes it away. The pain, the challenge, the struggle remains, but that soap scum-life residue that threatens to cling to the shower walls of our lives, that can be washed away.

Praying for you to experience True RAIN in your heart tonight.

Mom Speech: Back to School

Did anyone else give a speech this morning before dropping their impressionable youth back in the fishbowls of education? 

I can't be the only one who started with: "Don't be Assholes".

It never would have occurred to me to say that years ago when they first started school.

When our oldest graduated Kindergarten

They started out sweet, kind, innocent little boys who had not been bullied, yelled at, sworn at, talked down to, or generally pushed around in the public arena. Now, after one survived middle school, one is finishing middle school and one is finishing elementary, they have been there, done that and even caused some of it. 

We listened to an audio book on the way home from our road trip yesterday. Everybody Always by Bob Goff was the perfect listen just before school started. Loving people, even when it's hard, not being afraid, and recognizing that everyone comes from a different place and has a different story are excellent reminders before re-entry. 

Now that they have been immersed for years in the group dynamics of academics, relationships, competition, and general bored disrespect they have a choice to make:

They can be kids who put down, bully, and smack talk the people around them or be Mighty Men (I've called them that since they were small.) who speak hope, kindness, and encouragement. They say they want to be Mighty Men but one decision at a time will tell who they choose to become. 

9th, 8th, and 5th grade this year

Some decisions they made this summer weren't consistent with what they've been taught. We've had some pretty intense family discussions and training regarding appropriate respectful behaviors versus generally accepted boy nonsense. 

One of my greatest struggles is wanting to help them determine the best thing to do instead of letting them decide what to do. My Love is much better at this than I am. I recognize they must learn how to succeed and how to fail and recover but I find letting them do that is excruciating! However, this whole parenting thing isn't about me, is it?

Nope. It's about them. Becoming. Growing. Learning. Falling. Getting up. Trying again. 

I can't control their choices anymore (like I ever really could!), so, I remind them they are Mighty Men who can speak hope, kindness, and encouragement to others. And occasionally, I remind them of what they can become if they don't (see above). 

Teaching them to walk and use the potty was frustrating and messy at times and we survived that...