Aha!

I don't know if this has ever happened to you. Maybe it is only me and it means I am weird. I am actually OK with that. I read a magazine article and by the end of it, I was in tears because the author could have been describing my life or she said something that resonated so personally that it seemed as if that was put in there just for me.

I get this experience a lot at church, quite frankly. How could the pastor know I am going through that? How did the worship team know that I needed to hear that particular song? They did not know it on a person level of course. It is what I believe is the Divine moving inside me. Only the Lord knows exactly what I am going through and what I need to hear, see, read or touch. He orchestrates those moments. If I am receptive, I catch them.

As a single parent, I do not get a lot of time to myself. Sometimes my only safe haven is in the bathroom. And even that can be interrupted at any given moment. However, as my children get older they are less likely to barge in and are learning to respect the closed door. (This does not extend to a door that has not been closed solidly. If there is a crack or a broken seal, then it must mean it is OK to come in. It could not possibly mean that Mom was in a hurry...or that there are two doors and one was missed?) So, I will confess, I spend perhaps a little extra time in my little porcelain retreat than the job requires.

Yesterday, I read an article or an essay about a Mom who was struggling with connecting to her teenage son. She described the turmoil of adolescence for both of them in such a way that I was moved to tears and I was left with a new found insight into how I could approach the two children I have that are entering this stage.

She said that for some children, moving into adolescence, the transition seems relatively painless. They find their niche and go with it. For others, it is more painful. She described how it is like a caterpillar who has created it's chrysalis. A mother cannot climb in there with her child. It is an event that her child must go through alone. Her son created an environment that said, "Stay out" with his angry music, long black sweatshirts and questionable bedroom decor. But when she began to see it as his cocoon, she found she could slowly find ways to move back in to his life and reach back in to his world. The caterpillar in this cocoon stage is going through profound changes, as is a teenager. Everything about them is changing; hair, body, voice, brain and so forth. It is a scary time.

Like I said before, I got to the end of the article and the tears were pouring down my face like sheets of spring rain. Aha! I have been thinking about how much I am afraid of these impending teen years because of the changes I see. I see that time with my children is slipping away. It is moving to fast. I am grieving it. I missed the perspective of my children and what it is like for them.

Smacking myself in the head. I used to be a teenager. I remember feeling isolated a lot. I remember feeling like my parents "just don't get it". I remember thinking torn between what life used to be like when I was a kid and then also all the exciting things that were happening with new freedoms. Sometimes, I just wanted to be a kid. Mostly what I wanted was to be heard.

My son, the one who just turned 11, told me on Sunday that I do not know him at all, that I do not understand him. I wanted to shout back at him, "Of course I do! I have known you since before your born. I held you closer than any other person the planet!" Things are changing inside him and he is right, in a sense, I do not know him. I know glimpses of him and what he shows me and tells me. It is now my job to connect back to him and ask him to share himself with me, to let him tell me who he thinks he is and to help him figure it out or to just be here and support him while he enters his cocoon, goes through these changes and we see what comes out at the end.

I still want to cry. I want him to stay a little boy forever. I still think about the baby who would reach out to me, smiling when I picked him up at the end of the day. It's hard to let go of that.