Thankful Heart

 There are times when I am very hard on myself as a parent. When you have a dear child who struggles, sometimes intensely, with anxiety of all sorts, it's very easy to second-guess yourself at every turn. My daughter struggles hard every day to come to terms with brokenness and uncertainty, and the older she gets, the more she becomes aware how much life is full of both. I have an internal dialogue that goes something like this "Am I pushing her too hard? Am I not pushing her enough? Is she ever going to reach a place of enough healing on some of these issues that she will be able to make it through this life, which is filled with uncertainty, with more joy and peace than anxiety?" I can have those kinds of thoughts even in the midst of a relatively good day or week, when I realize how far she's come, but they especially whack me on the hard days.

So sometimes I just need to sit back, take a deep, trusting, cleansing breath, and remember what a delightful person she is and how hard she is trying to engage life with courage and creativity.

I love it that my almost twelve year old is coming up with creative ways to spend her summer, even in the face of disappointment over changes to long-standing summer plans. I love that she

• is boldly taking a art class at a local art center, where she's never taken a class before
• has an eighteen book TBR stack in her room
• has begun reading Moby Dick just to see if she can 
• is learning new embroidery stitches
• wants to begin daily drawing times again with me in July
• is looking forward to the celebration of her birthday
• is gardening with me again in the community gardens
• is excited about building a model bridge with her dad (they've been measuring things to make it to scale)
• will be taking workshops later this summer to keep her Irish Dance skills fresh
• is loving our family read-aloud of Lord of the Rings
• thinks it's cool that we're learning about the Lord's Prayer from a book by Kenneth Bailey
• is working on an entry for the county library picture book contest

Thank you, Lord, for all the ways you're growing her to be the young lady you want her to be. Thank you for giving me grace as a parent, and for filling up all the places where I know I lack strength, patience, and skill.