Skinned Knees & Broken Hearts
My daughter called me today. Before any words came across the phone, I could feel the agony. Quickly, her broken words tumbled out amidst the sobs. Before I understood what was going on, my heart was breaking.
All I could do was listen. My stomach felt like someone had punched me in the gut.
As a parent, we always want to comfort our children when they are hurting. We want to make things better. Now at age twenty-two, my baby girl has moved across the state. Where once I could wrap my arms around her and hold her close to calm her fears and wipe her tears, now I only have a lifeless phone to cross the distance and soothe the pain.
Being a parent is learning about the strengths you did not know you had and dealing with fears you did not know existed.
When our children are young, life seems so big and dangerous, skinned knees, hot stoves, falling off chairs. As they grow older, we realize how safe that time was and how we desperately want to go back to that simpler place. Oh, how often I would kiss the boo-boos and say, “OK, now it’s all better.” and away they would go to running back to the sandbox or wherever their next adventure awaited. Now, when my child hurts, it is often more pain of the heart, and the pain is deep. Leaving an invisible yet indelible scar, and I cannot seem to find a band-aid to fix that.
It is true; a parent feels the pain of their child. I do not know if it is because nothing is new, and we remember how we too, had our hearts broken or lost that new job. Or is it more? Once you become a parent, whether through giving birth, or adoption, or however that child came into your life, they become a part of you. We have given them our hearts. Suddenly our own needs pale. Those new shoes are insignificant when your favorite softball player needs a new bat for Friday’s game.
God gives us many blessings, but none so sweet and yet so painful as being a parent. But for all the pain, the grief, the skinned knees, the calls at 3 am, the broken hearts and banged up fenders, I would not change a thing. Except to hold them, wipe the tears away, and make it all better, whenever they needed me.better
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