When I was a young mom, my children were the most important thing in my life. As they, and me, grew, I came to appreciate them on a different level than the care taker role of a parent. But, the funny thing about being a parent...is that you, once are, never...aren't. My grown children, Jeff and Tyler, will always be my boys. Oh, for sure they are their "own" people. My influence over them or for them has waned as they passed the age of accountability to me (what is THAT age, anyway, hmmm?). The really cool thing about them is that they are a reflection of me in so many ways. Not that I'm that great to reflect. God knows I made horrible, ugly mistakes growing to the age and wisdom I have achieved. But, they are me..they love to read...love to debate just about anything...love being "Geeky" with board games and most importantly, they love being a part of our family.
When I became a grandmother - I honestly didn't think I was ready to be one. I looked in the mirror and saw a reflection of me, not a grandmother. When it happened a second time, I stared at the reflection looking back at me and realized that I was a grandmother. I wondered for about 1 nano-second how that had happened and knowingly smiled: Elizabeth and Elijah.
Now, I know there are folk who chose not to have kids and will never know what it is like to be a grandmother or a grandfather. That's OK. I respect them as people and more importantly, as friends.
Elizabeth and Eli are my youngest (Tyler) son's kids. They are resilient. If I could look for any other adjective to describe them at this juncture in their lives, I couldn't think of a better one than reslient.
Life is life on life's terms which is an expression I use to accept the changes in life over which I have absolutely no control....sometimes it sounds emotionless or heartless, depending on who is receiving the statement. And, it is never used casually as in...."Oh, your husband has cancer and got dead. Well, it is life on life's terms, after all." Nope...it's never used to sound superior, to block truth in emotion or feelings. It is as term that implies acceptance.
Drugs. We treat those affected with addictions as second-class citizens. We view them from our lofty perches as "those beneath us." We think of them as weak, without morals and individuals whom God has abandoned to an accidental overdose.
Drugs permeate all walks of life, all peoples and all families. And when the dark side of drugs comes knocking at your door, there can be no escape from the wreckage it causes. Lives are broken, homes destroyed and in the wake of the hurricane called addiction, children are often caught in the middle and shoved to the end of hope.
Hope. It is what we try to hold on to when someone we love is ravaged by the darkness of drug addiction (include alcohol). We can pray. We can let them go. We can intervene and suggest treatment through in-patient programs or the 12 Steps of AA in meetings. After that, we can do no more except hold on to Hope that one day (and hopefully sooner than later), our loved one(s) will be willing to turn their lives over to a Higher Power and learn the root of their thinking and how to live their lives in the presence of God as a human being, person who has been through the fire and can now help someone else.
Sometimes...all that we do through prayer and stepping back and allowing a Higher Power, God, to come into a life does no good and we lose friends and family members to the disease of addictions.
But, sometimes....sometimes,...the Hope we hold on to...the life we pray for steps from the darkness and into the growing and sometimes scary life where the darkness fades and the light bulb is turned on.
My family, including me and my husband, have been through the darkness. And when we were ready and most importantly, willing, to turn our lives over to a Higher Power of our choosing, we have been blessed with knowing we have been refined by the fire. We move forward in God's Will, never forgetting our pasts, not dwelling on them or wishing for something different. We accept, live day to day without doing any harm, trying our best to stay in God's Will and repeating the Serenity Prayer....over and over and over.....
Resilient. So, we look now at lives having been affected either through their own actions or those put upon them by others suffering in the disease of addictions and we hold all those lives and we say, Thank You, God.
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