I woke this morning disoriented trying to find my place into this world.  Re-entering the existence of life from the dream realm is often a bit tricky for me.  I had just dreamed that I had a beautiful tattoo that read “Love Heals” right on top of a beautiful turquoise-colored dragonfly with a bit of lavender around its wings.  I was so lost in the dream state that I found myself up and looking at my back on the mirror in darkness to see if I, indeed, had a tattoo.  Once, gathering my bearings, I sat back on my bed.  It has been a tough twenty hours.  My face and body show the signs of exhaustion.

When you have children the first order of business is making sure they are safe.  We love them with all we have and in that love we try to make sure they function and live in safety.  I say a prayer every morning for each one of my six children.  At night, as I move into the dream world, I close the day with another prayer for each one.  But yesterday I learned a valuable lesson:  I have no control of what happens to them.  I have little control of what happens to me as well.  And, I often wonder if my prayers get heard! Ultimately we are all here in this world to learn.  Control is all a façade that we have created to understand the order of things.  It is an illusion.  We have NO control, but we have choices in determining the path of how we will achieve the lessons.  We can go the easier route or just slam against a wall in a difficult manner.

Detaching from the chaos of fear and control is not easy.  I have an extra gene in my body: an anxiety gene.  It takes all of me, especially now that I live out here, to surrender to God and allow things to just happen.  I am getting better. I can honestly say that I have evolved in this “knowing” that things will be whatever they are supposed to be. But, when one of my children does something that rattles everyone else in the household I have to stand back and truly realize there is little control of anything.  It’s a reminder.  It’s a constant reminder!

Children are not ours to own for the time they are with us.  They are here to teach us so much about life and ourselves.  Each one of mine has brought invaluable lessons to the table.  They have molded me in ways that I don’t think anyone else could have impacted in my life.  Through their disorders, disabilities, and strengths I have learned to love unconditionally.  I am learning to just love others profoundly without judgments and criticisms.

Remembering this dream, now an hour after awakening, I understand that love is the only thing I am responsible for with anyone.  I can be here to love, physically protect (up to a point) and pass down the lessons of experience.  But, kids are funny that way…they don’t learn from our experiences.  I know I have never acquired someone else’s experience as my very own.  I don’t walk into a wall.  I dive into it with the force of being thrown off the Empire State Building.  I don’t know how to do anything in a minimal way but I am learning.

My children are gifts.  I am learning with each one of them that when they do something “out of the ordinary” I need to step back, instead of getting angry, and acquire the lesson in that experience.  It’s tough.  It’s not a job for the lighthearted.  Being a parent is the toughest job out there.  I pray that love is enough to heal the wounds of this young man who spent the first four years of his life in an orphanage.  I pray that love is all he needs to see that self-destructive behavior is not accepted here in this house but in another year he will be considered an adult and will pay the consequences.  I pray that my heart opens wider and my love travels into his heart on that dragonfly and he feels it….forever.