Me, Myself and I

I had to leave my son at Kindergarten for the first time yesterday.  It was difficult because he's my first-born and I feel like I just haven't had enough time with him.  I wasn't the only one.  I happened to know another mom who was dropping off her son for the first day as well.  This is her only child so she was experiencing everything I was times three.  She was trying valiantly not to cry because she didn't want to upset her son.  Her red eyes were a little more watery that they probably should have been but she was doing pretty well, I thought.  Her husband was being VERY insensitive to how emotional this was for her making comments like, "Oh Audrey, honestly!" in a tone that pretty much said "Just suck it up and get over it."  I'm working on having grace for others so I was able to restrain myself from clocking him in the face but I still felt bad for her.

I retold this story to a friend of mine this morning and she shared that she's working on overcoming fears that have followed her throughout her life.  She said that she would have felt sorry for that lady but her fears would have kept her from knowing what to do to help.  It came to me right then and there that I was unable to help, not because I was afraid, but because I'm selfish.  There.  I said it.  I'm selfish.  Self-centered, ego-centric, thoughtless, insensitive, you name it; that's me.  

I never saw it that way before.  Maybe I never wanted to.  Here's the thing: I'm not being what I always considered selfish.  I saw that grieving mom's plight and thought, "Oh.  Poor lady."  (In Texan that would be, "Awwwwweeee.  Bless her heart."  The word "heart" would be two syllables.)  In hindsight I should have asked her out for coffee or something just to give her a chance to talk to someone who would understand where she's coming from but I didn't.  Not because I thought about it and purposefully decided to go do my own thing, but because it never even occurred to me .  Lots of things never occur to me because I'm too busy dealing with my own crap. 

You see, I always thought that selfishness was choosing to think of yourself when others needed you more.  In my case, it's not a choice.  It's a habit.  My selfishness has become something that I just fall into without even trying or making a conscious decision.  I know for a fact that mom dropping her only child off at Kindergarten yesterday needed me a lot more than I needed to go spend money at IKEA.  If I had invited her for coffee she probably would have said no but she would have at least known that someone saw her in her pain and cared.

I have become obsessed with personal growth and becoming a better person that my kids can look up to and I have completely forgotten to love the people around me.  That's not true.  I haven't forgotten.  I just don't do it as much as I would like. How many times has someone needed me and I simply breezed on past them without even giving them a thought because I was so caught up in what I was doing at the moment?

The hard part is that I knew she was suffering and it never occurred to me to do anything about it.  Even when Jesus was mourning the horrific and senseless death of John the Baptist he had compassion for the crowds around him and fed them.  I think that maybe the issue here is not so much a lack of seeing as a lack of compulsion to do anything.   I think that's my problem more than anything else.  Most of the time I see others' pain and my heart is moved but not usually enough to do anything about it.  I think I often don't believe that anything I can do would be effectual anyway.

I guess that's my next project.  Realizing that I do have the power to do something to help; even if it's just inviting someone out for coffee and making a conscious effort to actually follow through.

Bye Mommy, I Gotta Go

I'm having a much harder time dealing with my son starting school tomorrow than I thought I would.  He's been especially troublesome lately so I thought I might actually be somewhat relieved to see him go (not that I would have actually admitted it.)  I'm not.

He excited and raring to go.  I'm glad that he is because it would be much harder for me if I were dealing with his fears AND my heartache.  I keep telling myself that he's going to have a great time and make lots of new friends and that this is just one more step into his eventual adulthood and independence.  That's my major job as a parent, right?  I'm supposed to make sure that he has the tools to be an independent, functional and Godly man when he's an adult.

This should be exciting for me that he's so ready to begin this next step.  Still, change has never been my strong suit.  This will be a big change that can never be taken back.  This isn't like a move to Montana or something that we can just move back if we find out it's a mistake.  This is a change that is permanent.  I can't help but feel that he will never fully be my little boy again.  From now on, he'll belong, just a little bit, to someone else.

That might not be such a bad thing.  I've been that someone else for lots of other parents.  It was a responsibility that I didn't take lightly.  I knew that I was, in some ways, the other adult that their children looked up to.  While I couldn't fully appreciate how hard that was for some of them, I did understand that it was a difficult transition for a lot of parents to let go.  However, I also understood that I could teach those kids in ways that their parents never could so I was not a replacement but an addition.

I guess that's how I have to see this.  This isn't someone else replacing me in my son's life but an addition to that whole "independence" education thing.  I'm working on seeing it that way, anyway.