I was glad/sad to see high click-throughs for my recent post, When Valentine’s Day is hard.
Maybe I’m reading into it. But maybe some of you are army-crawling through hard times. Or know someone who is. (Or are curious to see exactly how I would tackle that beast.)
Dear readers–I’m pulling this one from the archives today for you…mostly because it was what I needed. -J.
Do you remember the first time you wondered if God really was good?
A couple of weeks ago one of my teenagers was super-miffed with my husband and me.
On a car ride home from church, after explaining a biblical position we held on a touchy subject, this unnamed teenager maintained his shock and sudden anger.
“I just don’t understand how…”
I heard it again this week from someone else. This is after hearing it more times than I could count with someone else’s conflict.
I still recall with vividness my son’s drawing, proclaiming my anger issues to the world.
It was in red marker (his favorite color). Chunky hands rested on wonderfully slim, stick-figure hips. “I made you look mad, but you’re not mad in this picture,” he explained.
My 16-year-old was recently awarded his driver’s permit–okay, yikes–and with it, was pre-registered to vote. We don’t fall down the line politically, which I’m generally okay with. (You may remember we’re a lot different: see When Your Child is Different from What You Expected.)
As my kids grow older…so do their opinions. Sometimes I’m unprepared for the ways my boys and I don’t see eye-to-eye.
My father is the broad-shouldered, strong, internal teddy bear type, with fingers like sausages. In my childhood, he was a Midwestern farmer. In his spare time, he donates his mad skills to car repairs of missionaries, single moms, people like that. He’s that kind of guy.
And it’s common for him to come back into the house with blood zigzagging down his leg or seeping through his shirt.
So yeah. That happened.
I won’t tell you which one. It doesn’t matter. And I have this phobia my kids will need to be in therapy because their mother is a writer.
I admit to being comfortably removed from a lot of social media’s ANGRY CAPITALIZATION and #%$^& words for longer than is normal.
An overseas cocoon, removed from a lot of news, swaddled me. It was a happy place where celebs were just famous people. Where yet to come was the U.S. 2016 election–when it would feel like the whole country was getting a nasty divorce.
I have a child with ADHD and one who’s got a lot of impulsive energy (i.e. occasional irrationality typical to 10-year-old boys) at school.
I know that feeling of seeing the school’s number on my phone and thinking, Please let it be good news.
![Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language](https://www.janelbreitenstein.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/love-languages-text-1.jpg "Now You're Speaking My [Love] Language")
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