All the grace

Some many years back while I was taking a walk on a sunny day in southern New Mexico, I found myself surprised that although the sun was high and bright the air was cool and crisp. This is the first time that I remember delighting in the change of Season from Summer to Fall. 

Since that day, Fall has been my favorite time of year. Many years later after marriage and kids there would be a few years when, because this was a hard time of year for one of our kids, it felt like I’d lost that love of Fall. I remember grieving this loss while struggling to meet my child’s needs. 

In our house, these days there are no diapers, toddler toys, or even legos under injured feet. I can just about see a kind of finish line now, off in the not too distant future. I’m not eager for it. Don’t get me wrong, but I can see that it is coming faster than I’d like. I’m trying to count the precious moments as they come, doing my best to be here, present, and available. Of course, sometimes I make a mess of things. I do my best to repair and get back to them when that happens, back to just being their mama. 

Just last year I felt that old familiar joy as we moved from the hot and dry days of Summer to the bright blue skies and chilly air of autumn. Rather than dreading what may be coming behavior-wise from my child, the sound of fallen leaves, dry and rolling in the breeze, crackling down the street made my heart sing again. They had grown older and their dad and I had grown too.

All the seasons of parenting come with gifts and struggles, pain and joy. We happen to also be learning how to parent children who have experienced difficulties.This can be a hard thing, as growing goes.The way we thought things would be is often challenged. The way we always did things too. Maybe we learn to reassess what success can be for a child. Maybe we adjust our expectations and do our best to focus instead on building a bridge of trust to them so that they will know that they are important, that they matter and that they are safe, and loved, establishing as best we can, secure attachment for our kids. 

 “Attachment describes the early relationships we have with our primary caregivers, which goes on to inform our fundamental beliefs about ourselves, other people and the world around us. These beliefs are usually both very strongly held, but kept out of our minds in our unconscious. If attachment is secure, we believe that we are worthy good people, that other people can be trusted and that the world is a safe place to explore.if attachment is insecure, we may believe that we are bad and unworthy, that people are unsafe, unkind or likely to abandon us and that the world is a dangerous place.”​

” Dr. Billy Garvey 

Today I’m stuffing the lovely bits of this change of season into my pockets and holding them close to my heart. I’m purposefully making myself strong with them. For me, Faith leads me there. But for others it may be love, or values, beliefs about the value of humanity. Whatever it is that gives you the strength to keep going in the good and bad of these changing seasons of parenting, let it be just what you need when you need it. You’re doing great, keep on going..