WORST- The flow I wrote of in best continued into the night, it continued as the 17 year old and the 19 year old disrespected our house boundaries and involved us in activates and choices we can't condone. Serious infractions of how we have chosen to have life together as a family. The 17 year old is grounded, the 19 year old was asked to leave the house and return to his abode at uni. As L and I centered in prayer asking for wisdom, I asked him –"What do we want the 19 year old to know? What is the main focus we want him to walk away with?" L replied, after our 15 minutes of meeting for worship with a concern for parenting, "We want him to know we are for him."
Earlier, I had told the 17 year old that I wanted them both to have a good life, to be happy. My parenting, our parenting, has always grasping tried to be geared toward that – whatever we can do to further the boys moving toward a more good life. "Even at the risk of relationship?" he asked, "You would do what you felt you needed to do toward that, us having a good life, you not enabling our poor choices, even at the risk of relationship?"
"Yes," I replied. "How can you not know that about me?"
L's words made it even clearer – we are for the 19 year old. And sometimes that means the full message of "We love you dearly, there is a sweet spot in you that is deep and true, we love having you home, we miss you when you are not here, you are truly yar at times. And when you make choices that involve us where we have made clear we do not wish to be involved, you are going to need to no longer be a guest in this house." That was what the time of listening and speaking with him was about, those words, that truth, the first motion needs to be love.
It is funny how that works, the 17 year old was grounded, the 19 year old was asked to go back to his abode. I miss him already, and I hope when and if he comes home for Christmas he gets what we mean.





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